R8-3 


DAYS  AND  WAYS 
IN    OLD    BOSTON 


DAYS  AND  WAYS 
IN    OLD    BOSTON 


EDITED    BY 

WILLIAM  S.  ROSSITER 


Drawings  by  Malcolm  Fraser  and 
Jacques  Reich  of  the  Art  Staff  of 
the  Century  Magazine,  New  York 


BOSTON 

R.  H.  STEARNS  AND  COMPANY 
1915 


BOSTON  COLLEGB  M8&A&& 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 


Copyright 

R.  H.  Stearns  and  Company 

1914 

SECOND  EDITION 


FIRST  EDITION  5000  COPIES,  NOVEMBER  25 
SECOND  EDITION  5000  COPIES,  DECEMBER  14 


THE   RUMFORD   PRESS 
CONCORD,  N.  H. 


PREFACE 

Impressed  with  the  interesting  changes  that 
had  taken  place  in  Boston  and  its  business  methods 
within  the  last  two  generations,  we  began  some 
time  since  the  preparation  of  a  brief  pamphlet 
calling  attention  to  some  of  these  changes  which 
had  occurred  during  the  business  life  of  Mr.  R.  H. 
Stearns,  who  founded  this  business  in  1847  and  died 
in  1909.  It  was  our  intention  to  distribute  gratui- 
tously this  pamphlet  (partly  advertising  and 
partly  historical)  among  our  customers.  As  the 
work  progressed,  however,  we  found  so  much  of 
interest  which  had  occurred  in  the  year  '47  and 
so  much  of  Boston  history  which  was  connected 
with  our  present  location,  that  the  original  plan 
of  a  small  booklet  was  abandoned. 

Moreover,  competent  judges  advised  us  that 
the  material  thus  collected  was  of  more  than 
passing  importance — most  of  it  indeed  being  of 
real  historic  value — which  could  not  fail  to  interest 
a  much  wider  circle  of  readers. 

We  therefore  decided  to  eliminate  the  adver- 
tising matter  (unless  occasional  reference  in  signed 
articles  or  illustrations  showing  some  of  the 
changes  which  have  taken  place  at  the  historic 
corner  where  this  business  is  now  located  could 
be  so  construed)  and  to  print  in  permanent  book 
form  the  material  which  had  been  collected.  This 
volume  is  the  result. 


Preface 

With  this  explanation  we  submit  it  to  our 
friends  with  the  hope  that  those  who  personally 
or  through  family  ties  are  identified  with  old 
Boston  will  find  it  a  welcome  and  permanent 
addition  to  the  already  considerable  literature 
relating  to  the  city,  and  that  many  others,  with- 
out such  associations,  will  derive  both  pleasure 
and  inspiration  from  "Days  and  Ways  in  Old 
Boston." 

R.  H.  Stearns  and  Company. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

THE  YEAR  EIGHTEEN  FORTY  SEVEN 11 

By  William  S.   Rossitbr 

OTHER  DAYS  AND    WAYS   IN   BOSTON    AND 

CAMBRIDGE 27 

Bt  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson 

RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OLD  BOSTON 39 

From  a  Conversation  with  a  Boston  Ladt 
of  the  Period 

THE  OLD  BOSTON  WATER  FRONT 45 

By  Frank  H.  Forbes 

THE  OLD  ROSEWOOD  DESK 61 

By  Maud  Howe  Elliott 

ADVERTISING  LN  BOSTON,  1847-1914 77 

By  Robert  Lincoln  O'Brien 

BOSTON  AS  A  SHOPPING  CITY 83 

By  Heloise  E.  Hersey 

AN  HISTORIC  CORNER 91 

By  Walter  K.   Watkins 

OLD  BOSTON  BANKS 133 

From  Information  Furnished  by  Francis  R. 
Hart 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Celebration  on  the  Common  of  Introduction  of 

City  Water,  1848 Frontispiece 

The  Adams  House  in  1847 15 

Temple  Place  in  1860 16 

Railroad  Stations  in  Boston  in  1850: 

Eastern 18 

Fitchburg 19 

Boston  &  Maine 19 

Boston  &  Lowell 20 

Boston  &  Worcester 22 

Old  Colony 23 

Boston  &  Providence 23 

Railroad  Crossing,  Back  Bay,  1836 21 

Thomas  Wentworth  Higghstson 26 

James  Russell  Lowell 28 

Wendell  Phillips 29 

Map  of  Section  of  Boston,  1814 33 

Beacon  Street  Mall,  about  1850 35 

Louis  Agassiz 36 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 37 

Bird's-eye  View  of  Boston  Common,  about  1850. . .  43 

Old  Boston  Water  Front 47 

Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe 60 

Theodore  Parker 71 

Part  of  Evening  Transcript,  1847 79 

State  House  from  the  Common,  1836 82 

Mansion  erected  by  Hezekiah  Usher 96 

Waitstill  Winthrop 98 

The  Usher  Tomb 100 

Wedding  Gown  (1735)  of  Mistress  Roger  Price.  ..  103 

Sheriff  Stephen  Greenleaf 104 

Map  of  Boston,  1722 105 

The  John  Hancock  Mansion 106 

9 


Illustrations 


Map  of  Present  Temple  Place  Section,  1722 107 

Review  on  the  Common,  1768 108 

Boston  Common,  1799 110 

Charles  Bulftnch 112 

Common  Street,  now  Tremont,  looking  South,  1800  113 

Common  Street,  now  Tremont,  looking  North,  1800  115 

Beacon  Street  from  the  Common,  about  1812 118 

Announcement  of  the  Washington  Gardens 119 

Masonic  Temple,  Tremont  Street  and  Temple  Place, 

about  1875 124 

Amos  Bronson  Alcott 125 

Tremont  Street  from  Park  Street  Church,  1830. .  126 

Margaret  Fuller,  the  Marchioness  Ossoli 127 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 128 

Judge  John  Lowell 129 

Richard  H.  Stearns 129 

Tremont  Street  and  Temple  Place,  1914 131 

State  Street  in  1804 133 

Merchants  National  Bank 134 

National  Shawmut  Bank 136 

Massachusetts  Bank,  1800 139 

First  National  Bank,  1914 139 

State  Street,  1837 141 

Court  Street,  showing  Old  Colont  Trust  Company  143 


10 


Days  and  Ways  in  Old 
Boston 

THE  YEAR  EIGHTEEN  FORTY  SEVEN 

By  William  S.  Rossiter 

War  and  politics  conspired  to  make  1847  a 
year  of  much  importance  in  the  history  of  the 
United  States.  With  the  admission  of  Iowa  De- 
cember 28,  1846,  the  Union  consisted  of  twenty- 
nine  states  and  one  territory.  Part  of  Texas 
was  in  dispute,  and  the  area  which  extends 
from  the  Rio  Grande  to  the  Oregon  line  and 
now  includes  the  states  of  California,  Nevada, 
Utah,  New  Mexico  and  Arizona  and  much  of 
Colorado  and  Texas,  comprising  in  all  half  a 
million  square  miles,  was  still  a  part  of  the 
Republic  of  Mexico.  It  was  for  the  prize  of  this 
coveted  territory  that  war  was  declared  by  the 
United  States,  and  in  1847  the  assault  upon  Mexi- 
can domain  was  carried  to  a  successful  conclusion. 

National   Events  and  Conditions 

The  peculiar  importance  in  federal  history  of  the 
year  '47  did  not  arise  from  any  deliberate  purpose 
of  Congress  or  the  administration,  but  was  an 
incidental  result  of  the  political  exigencies  of  that 
period.     This  result  was  two  fold: 

The  pro-slavery  leaders  determined  to  extend — 
at  the  expense  of  Mexico — the  area  from  which  to 
erect  future  slave  holding  states.  This  immedi- 
ate object  failed,  but  the  southern  leaders  builded 
11 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

better  than  they  realized.  Victories  in  Mexico, 
culminating  in  1847,  added  to  the  United  States 
a  section  of  the  continent  which  was  never  avail- 
able for  slavery  but  which  became  almost  immedi- 
ately indispensable  to  the  growth  and  destiny  of 
the  Republic. 

The  Mexican  War,  by  the  brilliant  achievements 
of  the  American  armies,  aroused  the  pride  and 
fired  the  martial  spirit  of  the  people,  especially 
in  the  South.  This  successful  war  was  a  factor, 
probably  of  considerable  importance,  in  determin- 
ing the  attitude  of  the  southern  states  in  the  in- 
ternal dissensions  which  soon  led  to  civil  war. 
In  '47  the  war  news  was  a  long  succession  of 
victories.  In  February  General  Taylor  won  the 
hard  fought  battle  of  Buena  Vista.  In  March 
General  Scott  captured  Vera  Cruz.  In  April  he 
won  the  battle  of  Cerro  Gordo,  while  the  crown- 
ing events  of  the  war,  the  storming  of  Chapul- 
tepec  and  the  capture  of  the  City  of  Mexico  came 
in  September. 

There  are  few  twelve-month  periods,  therefore, 
in  the  century  and  a  third  elapsed  since  the  Re- 
public was  organized,  which  have  affected  more 
powerfully  its  territory  and  its  destiny. 

In  the  year  1847  James  K.  Polk  was  President 
of  the  United  States.  The  total  population  in  that 
year  according  to  an  estimate  made  four  years 
later  by  the  superintendent  of  the  Seventh 
Census,  was  21,154,144.  The  inhabitants  were 
still  principally  located  in  the  original  thirteen 
states.  Many,  however,  were  already  settling 
12 


The  Year  Eighteen  Forty  Seven 

in  the  rich  agricultural  areas  which  extended 
northward  from  Tennessee  to  the  Lakes,  and 
which  benefited  by  the  earliest  immigration 
movement  after  the  adoption  of  the  constitution 
and  the  close  of  General  Wayne's  campaigns 
against  the  Indians.  So  strong  was  the  tide  of 
immigration  that  by  1854  not  only  were  Cali- 
fornia and  Wisconsin  members  of  the  Union,  but 
Kansas,  Utah,  Minnesota,  Nebraska,  Oregon, 
Washington  and  New  Mexico  had  advanced  to  the 
dignity  of  federal  territories. 

When  the  social  conditions  of  that  period  are 
compared  with  those  prevailing  more  than  half 
a  century  later,  the  nation  seems  to  have  been 
conspicuous  in  '47  for  plain  living,  and  the  pref- 
erence shown  by  a  homogeneous  population  for 
country  life  as  compared  with  that  in  towns 
and  cities.  In  1850,  indeed,  three  quarters  of 
the  population  of  the  North  Atlantic  States 
dwelt  in  communities  of  less  than  5,000  inhabi- 
tants and  one  quarter  in  large  towns  and  cities, 
proportions  which  sixty -four  years  later  are  prac- 
tically reversed. 

New  York  contained  about  475,000  inhabitants. 
Brooklyn,  not  yet  a  part  of  greater  New  York's 
vast  population,  was  a  modest  independent  city 
of  approximately  75,000  souls,  reached  only  by 
small  ferry  boats,  after  long  periods  of  waiting. 
Chicago  was  a  newly  founded  prairie  town  of 
about  20,000  inhabitants.  Philadelphia,  with  its 
independent  suburban  towns,  included  about 
300,000  people. 

13 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 


Boston  in  1847 

Boston  was  a  small  city, — as  we  now  regard 
cities, —  of  130,000  inhabitants,  but  this  total  did 
not  include  the  quiet  country  population  of  Rox- 
bury  and  Dorchester.  Roxbury,  however,  by  a 
vote  of  837  to  129  had  just  resolved  to  become  a 
city.  Somerville  had  been  set  off  from  Charles- 
town  but  five  years  before,  in  1842,  and  when 
made  an  independent  town,  it  contained  neither 
a  post  office,  hotel,  lawyer,  clergyman  nor  physi- 
cian. Brookline,  now  famous  as  a  beautiful  and 
wealthy  suburb  of  30,000  inhabitants,  was  a 
village  of  2400  population. 

Boston  was  not  only  small  in  population,  but 
small  in  area.  The  broad  streets  and  avenues 
which  now  stretch  from  the  Public  Garden,  and 
are  known  as  the  Back  Bay,  sixty  years  ago  were 
represented  by  open  water  or  marsh.  In  fact,  the 
Public  Garden  had  but  recently  been  reclaimed 
from  a  damp  and  undeveloped  tract  seemingly 
hopeless  for  any  practical  use.  Where  Beacon 
Street  now  descends  the  hill  to  stretch  into  the 
Back  Bay  district,  was  the  famous  "Mill  Dam" 
connecting  Boston  with  the  narrow  roadway  that 
led  to  Brookline.  This  strip  of  land  was  wide 
enough  to  accommodate  only  a  few  buildings. 
Facing  the  Common  on  Beacon  Street  still  lingered 
the  John  Hancock  mansion,  a  famous  old  colonial 
home.  Tremont  and  Boylston  were  residence 
streets,  as  were  also  Temple  Place,  Summer,  Win- 
ter and  Franklin  Streets.  Retail  business — 
14 


The  Year  Eighteen  Forty  Seven 

and  as  we  judge  business  today  it  was  very  deco- 
rous and  deliberate — was  confined  principally  to 
Washington  Street,  Scollay  Square  (including 
Tremont  Row),  Hanover,  Court  and  State  Streets, 
to  which  of  course  should  be  added  the  water  front 
from  which  came  in  generous  measure  so  much 
of  Boston's  material  prosperity  during  the  era  of 
American  commerce  which  culminated  in  the 
early  fifties. 

In  1847  the  Revere  House  was  completed  and 
opened,  and  was  regarded  as  easily  the  largest 
and  finest  hotel  in  New  England.  On  June  29th, 
when  President  Polk  visited  Boston  as  the  guest 
of  the  city,  he  was  lodged  at  this  new  and  sump- 
tuous hotel.  Other  Boston  hotels  of  that  period 
were  the  Tremont  House,  Adams  House,  the 
American  House  and  United  States  Hotel. 

Aside  from  the  State  House,  public  buildings 
were  few  and  of  simple  architecture  when  judged 
by  the  standards  of  later  years.  The  Boston 
Post  Office  was  located  in  the  Merchants  Exchange 
on  State  Street.  It  is  difficult,  indeed,  to  realize 
how  business  could  be  conducted  at  all  with  the 
limited  mail  service  available  in  1847.  In  that 
year  there  was  one  northern,  one  southern,  and 
one  eastern  mail  daily,  three  to  Lowell,  two  each 
to  Providence,  Worcester,  Springfield,  Hartford 
and  Albany.  Other  towns  such  as  Haverhill, 
and  Nashua,  Manchester  and  Concord,  N.  H., 
averaged  about  two  mails  per  day.  The  mail  to 
England  was  received  and  forwarded  twice  each 
month.     Boston  and  suburbs  at  this  time  sup- 

15 


Hill    — ^&ns= 


%       A*\oU  prpe 


Temple  Place  in  1860 
The  site  of  the  first  three  buildings  is  now  covered  by  the  rear  of  the  present 
ten  story  building  facing  Tremont  Street 


The  Year  Eighteen  Forty  Seven 

ported  about  75  newspapers  and  periodicals  of  all 
kinds  but  their  aggregate  circulation  was  very 
limited. 

During  the  year  1847  the  Custom  House  was 
completed,  and  the  corner  stone  of  the  Atheneum 
on  Beacon  Street  was  laid.  On  the  latter  occasion 
the  address  was  delivered  by  Hon.  Josiah  Quincy. 
The  year  was  made  memorable  in  Boston  by  the 
breaking  of  ground  in  front  of  the  old  State  House 
on  Washington  Street  for  pipes  to  carry  water 
through  the  city.  The  law  which  made  this 
public  improvement  possible  had  passed  the 
legislature  in  April,  1846,  and  on  being  submitted 
to  a  popular  vote  in  Boston  was  approved  4667  to 
348.  It  is  difficult  now  to  understand  how  any- 
one could  oppose  the  introduction  of  public  water 
works.  Later  in  the  same  year  the  ground  was 
broken  for  an  aqueduct  at  Long  Pond,  and 
Hon.  John  Quincy  Adams  took  part  in  the  cere- 
monies. 

The  revolution  in  methods  of  living  which  has 
occurred  since  1847  is  perhaps  illustrated  most 
strikingly  by  the  change  in  transportation  f  acuities. 
In  the  year  1847,  Boston  did  not  possess  even  one 
horse  car  line.  Instead,  the  city  and  its  suburbs 
were  connected  by  various  stage  lines  which  fur- 
nished inadequate  service  to  Roxbury,  Cambridge, 
Charlestown,  etc.  One  of  these  lines  of  prim- 
itive omnibuses  ran  at  intervals  of  seven  minutes 
from  Charlestown  to  Scollay  Square.  Another 
line  ran  along  Washington  Street  to  "the  Neck." 
Another  line  of  omnibuses  starting  from  Scollay 
2  17 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

Square,  connected  Boston  with  Cambridge.   Stages 
ran  to  Maiden  and  other  towns. 

Railroads  * 
In  1847  there  were  eight  railroad  stations  within 
the  city  limits  of  Boston.  The  Eastern  Railroad 
which  had  been  opened  ten  years  before,  was  71 
miles  in  length,  and  subsequently  was  extended 
to  Portland,  a  distance  of  110  miles.  The  trains  of 


Eastern  Railroad  Station 

this  road  were  reached  by  crossing  a  ferry  from 
Commercial  Street  to  East  Boston. 

The  Boston  &  Maine  Railroad  was  71  miles  in 
length  and  was  opened  for  travel  in  1843.  An- 
other division,  opened  in  1845,  passed  through 
Reading,  Maiden  and  the  suburban  towns  of  that 
section.  The  Boston  terminal,  fronting  on  Hay- 
market  Square,  was  a  large  brick  building  two 


*  The  illustrations  of  railroad  stations  which  appear  in  the  follow- 
ing pages  are  reproductions  of  wood  cuts  published  in  1852. 

18 


Boston  and  Maine  Railroad  Station 


Fitchburg  Railroad  Station 


Days    and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

stories  in  height,  erected  on  the  former  bed  of  a 
canal.  This  was  regarded  as  more  centrally 
located  than  the  other  railroad  stations.  The 
ground  floor  of  the  building  was  utilized  as  a 
station,  but  the  second  floor,  or  loft,  was  rented 
by  the  railroad  to  a  firm  of  merchants  as  a 
carpet  wareroom. 

This  road  was  declared  to  be  one  of  the  most 


Boston  and  Lowell  Railroad  Station 


promising  in  New  England,  and  it  was  said 
at  that  period  that  if  any  property  of  this  kind 
could  succeed,  the  Boston  &  Maine  was  destined 
to  become  very  valuable. 

The  Boston  &  Lowell  Railroad  which  had  been 
opened  in  1835  and  subsequently  extended,  was 
said  to  be  the  most  substantially  constructed 
railway  in  Massachusetts.  It  was  double  tracked 
from  Boston  to  Lowell,  a  distance  of  26  miles; 
the  tracks  were  laid  on  stone  sleepers.  A  branch 
extended  to  Woburn.  In  1847  the  fare  from 
20 


The  Year  Eighteen  Forty  Seven 

Boston  to  Lowell  was  65  cents  and  there  were  six 
trains  daily,  except  Sunday,  each  way.  The  sta- 
tion in  Boston,  located  at  the  foot  of  Lowell 
Street,  was  a  plain  brick  building  with  no  pre- 
tensions whatever  to  architectural  elegance. 

The  Fitchburg  Railroad,  which  had  been  opened 
for  travel  on  March  5,  1845,  extended  49  miles  to 
Fitchburg  and  under  lease  a  small  branch  was 
operated  to  Fresh  Pond.  The  Boston  terminal 
was  located  in  Charlestown,  but  a  few  years 
later  the  building  which  now  stands  on  Cause- 
way Street  was  erected,  and  was  regarded  at 
the  time  as  one  of  the  most  imposing  stations 
in  the  United  States.  Between  Boston  and 
Fitchburg  three  trains  were  run  daily  each  way 
(except  Sunday).  It  is  interesting  to  note  that 
in  '47  the  entire  rolling  stock  of  the  Fitchburg 
Railroad  consisted  of  three  six-wheeled  loco- 
motives, six  eight-wheeled  locomotives,  15  pas- 
senger cars,  and  freight  cars  which  together  were 
computed  to  equal  212  "four-wheeled  cars." 

The  Boston  and  Worcester  Railroad  which  con- 
nected the  two  cities,  and  covered  a  distance  of  45 
miles,  had  been  opened  for  travel  with  a  single 
track  in  1835.  The  plain  brick  spacious  station 
was  located  on  the  corner  of  Beach  and  Kneeland 
Streets.  There  were  four  passenger  trains  daily 
each  way  between  Boston  and  Worcester.  In 
addition,  a  freight  train  with  passenger  cars  at- 
tached left  Boston  for  Worcester  at  noon.  This 
road  was  probably  more  largely  patronized  at  that 
period  than  any  of  the  others  and  by  1845  the  in- 
21 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

come  of  the  road  was  half  a  million  dollars  per  an- 
num. Worcester  at  this  period  had  a  population  of 
approximately  10,000.  It  was  the  eastern  terminus 
of  the  Western  Railroad  which  ran  from  Worces- 
ter through  Springfield  to  Albany,  and  was  thus 
the  junction  for  travelers  passing  between  Boston 
and  the  Hudson  River  and  Mohawk  Valley 
regions. 

Over  the  Boston  and  Worcester  Railroad  there 


Boston  and  Worcesteb  Railroad  Station 


were  two  trains  daily  between  Boston  and  New 
York  by  way  of  Springfield,  and  in  addition  a 
boat  train  left  at  five  p.m.,  via  Worcester  and 
Norwich. 

The  Boston  and  Providence  Railroad  had  been 
in  operation  since  the  4th  of  June,  1834.  The 
station  in  Boston  was  a  brick  structure  rather 
more  pretentious  than  the  other  railway  stations 
of  that  period.  There  was  a  two-train  service 
22 


Boston  and  Providence  Railroad  Station 


Old  Colony  Railroad  Station 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

daily  between  these  cities,  one  train  in  the  morning 
and  one  in  the  afternoon  in  each  direction.  A 
"steamboat  train"  ran  in  the  afternoon  to  Ston- 
ington.  This  road  also  operated  four  trains 
daily  each  way  between  Boston  and  Dedham, 
and  two  between  Boston  and  Stoughton. 

In  1847  the  Old  Colony  Railroad  had  been  in 
operation  for  more  than  a  year.  This  road  ex- 
tended from  Boston  to  Fall  River  and  also  from 
Braintree  to  Plymouth,  with  several  short  branch 
lines.  The  station  was  a  three  story  brick  structure 
at  the  corner  of  Kneeland  and  South  Streets. 

Transportation  between  the  various  railway 
stations  in  Boston  or  to  different  parts  of  the 
city  was  effected  by  the  use  of  stages  or  "hacks." 
From  the  Boston  and  Lowell  Station,  for  ex- 
ample, Cheney,  Averill  &  Company  operated  an 
omnibus  line  to  State  Street.  For  this  trip,  with- 
out baggage,  6|  cents  was  charged.  Between 
the  station  and  any  part  of  the  city  proper, 
railroad  carriages  or  omnibuses  conveyed  pas- 
sengers for  Y&\  cents  each. 

BOSTONIANS    OF    THE    PERIOD 

In  the  year  '47  the  population  of  Boston  was 
composed  chiefly  of  the  native  stock.  The  city 
at  that  period  was  a  distinctively  New  England 
community  in  which  the  citizens  held  to  the  con- 
servatism and  the  comparatively  simple  habits  of 
their  ancestors. 

The  comment  of  Josiah  P.  Quincy  writing  in 
1881   of  the  characteristics  of  Boston  in  1800, 

24 


The  Year  Eighteen  Forty  Seven 

applies  almost  equally  well  to  the  Boston  of 
1847: 

"There  were  distinctions  in  Boston  society 
which  were  the  inheritance  of  old  colonial  and 
provincial  relations. 

"The  population  was  chiefly  of  English  descent. 
A  type  of  manhood,  ruddier  and  more  robust  than 
we  are  accustomed  to  meet,  was  to  be  seen  in 
the  streets.  The  citizens  managed  to  be  as  com- 
fortable at  sixty  degrees  Fahrenheit  as  we  are  at 
seventy,  and  knew  little  of  dyspepsia  and  those 
disordered  nerve-centres  which  occasion  their 
descendants  so  much  trouble. 

"Many  of  the  peculiarities  of  Puritanism  had 
been  softened,  and  so  much  of  the  old  severity  as 
remained  supported  the  moral  standards  which 
the  God-fearing  founders  of  the  State  had  raised. 
A  few  men  were  accepted  as  the  leaders  of  the 
community  and  lived  under  a  wholesome  convic- 
tion of  responsibility  for  its  good  behavior.  If 
the  representatives  of  good  society  were  in  no 
sense  cosmopolitan,  their  provincialism  was  hon- 
est, manly,  and  intelligent." 


25 


Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson 


OTHER    DAYS   AND    WAYS    IN    BOSTON 
AND    CAMBRIDGE* 

By  Thomas  Wentwqjrth  Higginson 

In  my  youth  the  only  public  conveyance  be- 
tween Boston  and  Cambridge  was  Morse's  hourly 
stage.  The  driver  was  a  big,  burly,  red-faced 
man  and  the  fare  was  twenty -five  cents  each  way. 
We  drove  through  the  then  open  region,  past  Dana 
Hill,  to  the  "Port,"  where  we  sometimes  had  to 
encounter,  even  on  the  stage-box,  the  open  ir- 
reverence of  the  "Port  chucks,"  a  phrase  applied 
to  the  boys  of  that  locality,  who  kept  up  an  antag- 
onism now  apparently  extinct.  Somehow,  I  do 
not  know  why,  the  Port  delegation  seemed  to  be 
larger  and  more  pugnacious  than  the  sons  of  col- 
lege professors  and  college  stewards.  As  we  left 
the  village  of  Old  Cambridge,  there  were  but  few 
houses  along  the  open  road,  until  we  came  to  the 
village  at  the  Port.  Leaving  that  behind  us,  we 
drove  over  more  open  roads,  crossed  the  river 
by  the  old  West  Boston  bridge,  and  came  to  the 
more  thickly  settled  town  of  Boston. 

But  many  people,  in  those  days,  walked  back 
and  forth,  in  spite  of  the  celebrated  Cambridge 
mud,  which,  I  regret  to  say,  still  lingers  in  my  na- 
tive town.  At  the  time  of  Charles  Dickens'  first 
visit  to  the  States  in  1842,  one  of  my  boyish  play- 

*  Written  in  February,  1911. 

27 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 


mates,  reporting  a  walk  he  had  taken  in  Cam- 
bridge, said,  "the  soil  clung  to  me  like  the  women 
to  Boz."  However,  it  was  very  common  for 
Boston  and  Cambridge  ladies  to  walk  back  and 
forth  to  visit  their  friends  and  do  their  shopping. 
My  mother  often  walked  in  and  out  of  town. 
Indeed,  from  the  shopping  center,  then  located 
on  Washington  street,  it  was  not  too  long  a  walk 
to  Cambridge  village  or  what  is  now  called  Har- 
vard Square. 

It  was  in  the  forties  that  I  sometimes  attended 
evening  lectures  in  Boston.  The  walk  between 
the  two  towns  was  to  my  boyish  notions  delight- 
ful, though  it  was  a  plunge  into  darkness.  Here 
and  there,  in  the  distance,  sputtered  a  dim  oil 
lamp.  But  there  was  much  more  craft  on  the 
river,  and  I  can  remember  being  hailed,  when 
crossing  the  bridge,  and  offered  money  to  pilot  a 
coasting  schooner  to  Wat- 
ertown.  My  old  friend 
and  schoolmate,  James 
Russell  Lowell,  sometimes 
walked  out  with  me  from 
these  lectures.  On  one  of 
these  walks  with  Lowell, 
I  remember  that  we  saw 
two  men  leaning  over  the 
bridge  watching,  what  was 
not  uncommon  in  those 
days,  two  seals  playing  in 
the  water.  As  we  ap- 
proached we  heard  one  of 
28 


James  Russell  Lowell 


In     Boston   and   Cambridge 


the  men  say  to  the  other,  "WaP,  now,  do  you 
'spose  them  critters  are  common  up  this  way! 
Be  they,  or  be  they?"  "Wal',"  said  the  other, 
"I  dunno's  they  be,  and  I  dunno  as  they  be!" 
As  we  walked  on,  we  speculated  on  the  peculiar- 
ities of  the  New  England  rural  dialect. 

Before  my  birth  my  father  had  built  a  house, 
which  is  still  standing,  at  the  head  of  what  was 
then  called  Professor's  Row,  but  is  now  known 
as  Kirkland  Street.  This  led  directly  to  East 
Cambridge  which  formed  a  separate  village,  and 
I  remember  once  driving  there  with  my  father  in 
the  family  chaise. 

My  elder  brother,  who  was  in  college  at  the 
same  time  that  Wendell  Phillips  was,  used  to  say 
that  Phillips  was  the  only  student  of  that  period 
for  whom  the  family  carriage  was  habitually 
sent  out  to  Cambridge  on  Saturday  morning  to 
bring  him  into  Boston  for  Sunday. 

On  one  end  of  Boston  Common,  near  Park 
Street,  there  was  once  a  playground  where  my 
cousins  used  to  go  and  play  ball;  and  when  I 
went  into  Boston,  I  used  often  to  go  there  and 
watch  the  game.  They  played  with  larger  balls 
and  larger  bats  than  they  do 
now  and  one  of  my  cousins  was 
a  leader  in  all  the  games. 

The  East  India  trade  still  lin- 
gered in  Boston,  I  remember, 
and  Cambridge  boys  were  some- 
times sent  to  sea  as  a  punish- 
ment or  a  cure  for  naughtiness. 
29 


Wendell  Phillips 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

Groups  of  sailors  sometimes  strayed  through 
Cambridge  and  there  were  aromatic  smells  about 
the  Boston  wharves. 

My  boyish  friends  were  generally  connected 
with  college  families;  but  I  remember  one  boy 
alone  with  whom  I  was  forbidden  to  associate.  I 
am  now  inclined  to  doubt  whether  he  had  com- 
mitted any  greater  offence  than  that  of  having 
gone  to  sea,  and  having  brought  back  a  little  more 
freedom  of  language  than  was  used  by  the  other 
boys.  I  remember  also  that  we  used  as  a  play- 
ground the  large  triangle  of  land  which  is  now 
occupied  by  Memorial  Hall,  but  then  was  used 
as  an  out-door  gymnasium,  constructed  by  the 
German  professor,  Dr.  Follen.  There  were  re- 
mains of  the  ladders  and  pits  he  had  arranged  and 
we  used  these  pits  to  hold  the  collection  of  apples 
which  we  brought  home  as  we  came  from  school. 
A  little  later,  as  we  grew  older,  we  constructed  a 
miniature  post  office  in  one  of  the  gardens  along 
the  road  where  I  lived,  where  we  sent  letters  to 
one  another.  One  of  the  largest  boys,  later  the 
Rev.  J.  F.  W.  Ware,  amused  himself  by  writing 
satires  about  each  of  us  and  putting  them  into 
the  post  office  where  each  could  get  his  own. 

North  Cambridge,  as  yet,  was  not,  though  Por- 
ter's Tavern  was  a  favorite  place  of  resort;  and  we 
Old  Cambridge  boys  watched  with  a  pleased  in- 
terest, not  quite  undemoralizing,  the  triumphant 
march  of  the  "Harvard  Washington  Corps" — 
the  college  military  company — to  that  hostelry 
for  dinner  on  public  days,  and  their  less  regular 
30 


In   Boston   and   Cambridge 

and  decorous  return.  Near  the  Tavern  was  an 
open  field  where  horse  races  took  place. 

At  the  time  when  I  entered  Harvard  College, 
when  I  was  nearly  fourteen,  my  mother  and  sis- 
ters (my  father  having  died)  changed  their  abode 
to  a  house  which  my  elder  brother  had  built  on 
the  present  Radcliffe  College  grounds,  and  which 
has  only  recently  been  taken  down  to  make  place 
for  a  more  modern  building.  Harvard  College 
then  consisted  of  but  few  buildings  as  compared 
with  the  present  time.  There  was  no  Hemenway 
Gymnasium  and  no  Memorial  Hall.  We  had 
what  was  called  Commons,  where  a  student,  if  he 
wished,  could  take  his  meals.  These  Commons 
were  then  in  the  lower  part  of  University  Hall. 
The  customs  of  the  students  were  quite  different 
from  their  present  habits.  In  the  more  boyish 
class  of  offences,  such  as  breaking  of  windows,  the 
making  of  bonfires,  and  hooting  under  the  win- 
dows of  unpopular  instructors,  there  has  been  a 
change  so  great  as  to  come  near  extinction.  This 
is  still  more  true  of  the  robbing  of  hen-roosts  and 
of  market  gardens,  which  would  now  be  consid- 
ered exceedingly  bad  form,  but  which  was  then  a 
very  common  practice.  I  can  recall  members  of 
my  class,  afterwards  grave  dignitaries,  who  used 
to  go  out  in  small  parties  on  autumn  evenings 
with  large  baskets,  and  bring  them  back  laden  with 
apples,  pears,  grapes  and  melons  from  the  region 
now  known  as  Belmont. 

A  cousin  of  mine  from  Virginia,  who  was  in 
college  with  me,  used  to  go  out  occasionally  and 
81 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

rob  a  hen-roost  and  then  he  would  show  me  how 
deliciously  he  could  cook  his  booty  by  suspending  it 
from  a  string  before  his  open  fire.  The  later 
practice  of  collecting  signs  and  numbers  from 
shops  and  dwelling-houses  has,  I  trust,  also  gone 
out  of  fashion.  At  any  rate,  it  is  some  years 
since  I  was  obliged  to  give  up  having  brass 
numbers  on  my  house  and  substitute  painted 
ones. 

We  went  for  our  costumes  to  one  Randage,  a 
tailor,  on  Washington  Street,  Boston,  whose  store 
was  a  popular  place  for  college  boys  to  trade  at, 
and  our  clothes  were  less  sober  then  than  now. 
The  trousers  had  a  strap  of  the  same  material 
attached  to  the  bottom,  so  that  this  strap  would 
fit  under  the  shoe,  the  effect  being  that  of  a  sort 
of  gaiter.  We  would  go  for  ice-cream  to  a  well- 
known  store  on  School  Street,  though  I  forget  the 
name  of  the  caterer.  Theatres  were  not  numer- 
ous, as  they  are  now,  but  I  remember  the  first 
time  that  I  went  to  one.  It  was  in  the  early 
forties,  while  I  was  in  college  and  near  the  time 
when  the  elder  Beecher  (father  of  Henry  Ward) 
boasted  of  having  closed  all  such  institutions  in 
Boston.  The  play  or  opera,  which  I  can  vividly 
recall  to  this  day,  was  "La  Somnambula,"  and  I 
shall  never  forget  the  remarkable  actress  who,  in 
her  sleep,  walked  down  a  supposed  roof  from  a 
window  and  slid  safely  to  the  ground.  My  visit 
to  this  entertainment  was  mainly  surreptitious, 
which  enhanced  its  attractions,  I  suppose.  I  was 
taken  very  early  to  concerts  in  Boston,  where  I 
32 


?i£^£§  r 


SI  ?M 


TttoFW,- 


'yT    „_ J- 


Map  or  Section  of  Boston,  1814 


In   Boston   and   Cambridge 

acted  as  escort  to  my  stately  aunt,  Mrs.  Francis 
Channing,  who  drove  us  in. 

I  find  recorded,  in  the  year  1845,  that  I  was 
invited  to  hear  the  famous  Ole  Bull  play  at  the 
house  of  Mr.  James  Lowell,  who  had  asked  a  few 
people  to  meet  him;  but  the  great  violinist  did  not 
come,  and  I  wrote  down  at  that  time: — "The 
Lion  from  the  North  was  to  have  walked  out  of 
Boston  at  6  P.  M.  with  John  Hopper  .  .  . 
but  he  appeared  not,  being  lost  in  Cambridge- 
port  lanes  we  supposed — I  was  sorry  for  he  is  said 
to  be  a  charming  person  to  know,  so  simple  and 
natural  and  fresh." 

In  the  same  year  I  find  the  following  entry  in 
my  letters:  "At  Cambridge  we  are  in  peace  since 
the  Texas  petition  (764  names,  13  ft.  long,  double 
column)  went  off."  This  petition  was  to  oppose 
the  admission  of  Texas  to  the  Union. 

In  those  days  Christmas  gifts  were  not  the 
customary  thing;  but  the  making  of  presents  was 
reserved  until  New  Year's,  although  I  find  an 
account  of  celebrating  Christmas  by  taking  part 
in  charades  and  dancing  on  that  evening, — ending 
by  joining  Levi  Thaxter  (afterwards  Celia  Thax- 
ter's  husband)  and  giving  a  serenade  to  a  certain 
Cambridge  belle.  I  also  find  recorded  that  I 
broke  down  ignominiously  in  singing  "Love 
wakes  and  weeps"  and  made  an  absurd  exit, 
scrambling  over  fences. 

This  period  was  before  the  time  of  annual  sum- 
mer Sittings,  but  there  was  a  great  deal  of  calling 
in  the  warm  weather,  especially  at  the  house  of 
3  33 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

Samuel  Perkins  in  Brookline.  I  remember  when 
I  lived  in  Brookline  as  tutor  to  his  grandchildren — 
his  wife  being  my  aunt — how  the  family  friends 
would  drive  out  in  the  afternoon  and  be  treated 
to  fruit,  cake,  and  the  like,  and  visit  the  gardens, 
which  were  then  quite  unique.  Daniel  Webster 
came  once,  and  it  was  my  great  good  fortune  to 
hand  him  some  sugar  for  his  cup  of  tea.  Among 
the  other  guests  came  members  of  Brook  Farm, 
some  of  whom  wore  peculiar  costumes.  Several 
times  I  drove  one  of  my  cousins  out  to  fancy 
dress  entertainments  given  by  these  social  experi- 
menters, where  I  must  have  seen  Hawthorne; 
and  George  Curtis  in  his  shirt-sleeves  could  be 
seen  wiping  dishes  which  the  young  ladies  had 
washed. 

Two  years  later  I  gave  up  this  position  of 
tutor  which  I  had  been  filling,  because  I  had  de- 
cided that  the  best  thing  for  me  to  do  was  to 
return  to  Cambridge  and  take  up  my  studies 
again.  I  vividly  remember  my  journey  from 
Brookline  to  Cambridge.  I  procured  a  convey- 
ance of  some  sort  to  bear  my  few  earthly  posses- 
sions,— boxes,  trunks,  and  the  like, — to  my  new 
quarters,  but  I  walked  most  of  the  way  in  the 
mud,  alongside  of  my  belongings.  In  approach- 
ing the  Charles  River  I  came  past  what  is  now 
Soldiers'  Field  with  its  great  stadium.  Then,  I 
looked  out  over  open  meadows  and  marshes  which 
were  overflowed  at  high  tide;  but  how  they  are 
transformed  now  when  they  have  become  a 
playground  for  a  great  university!     I  also  passed 


In   Boston   and   Cambridge 

the  farm  of  Emery  Willard,  whom  we  boys  revered 
because  he  was  reputed  the  strongest  man  in  or 
near  Cambridge.  He  kept  the  wood  yard  just 
across  the  Brighton  Bridge,  and  I  think  I  must 
have  crossed  over  the  same  rickety  bridge  that 
spans  the  Charles  at  that  point  now.  I  read 
Irving's  "Sketch  Book"  and  "Bracebridge  Hall" 
in  those  days  and  always  identified  Emery  Willard 
with  the  "Ready  Money  Jack"  of  old  England. 


Beacon  Street  Mall  about   1850 

At  this  period  the  finest  residences  of  Boston 
clustered  around  Beacon  Hill.  From  Charles 
Street,  this  aristocratic  region  stretched  up 
Beacon  Street  to  the  State  House,  and  through 
some  of  the  side  streets.  Many  of  the  houses 
were  separate,  with  gardens  and  grounds  about 
them,  and  some  of  them  were  built  in  blocks.  If 
I  remember  aright,  Park  Street  had  a  row  of 
houses  built  close  together  at  that  time.  Beacon 
35 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 


Street  was  truthfully  described  by  Holmes  as  "the 
sunny  street  that  holds  the  sifted  few,"  and  young 
men  and  maidens  in  good  society  carried  on  their 
courtships  while  walking  around  the  Common  or 
down  the  long  path  or  on  the  mill-dam.  "Whom 
does  Arabella  walk  with  now?"  was  a  question 
occasionally  heard  in  careful  circles  of  maiden 
aunts. 

The  Charles  River  with  its  accompanying 
marshes  and  low  lands  came  up  to  Charles  Street. 
Boats  came  and  went  freely  along  the  river  before 
all  that  region  of  marsh  land  had  been  filled  in  and 
transformed  into  what  we  call  the  Back  Bay,  a 
name  which  is  sometimes  puzzling  to  strangers 
who  do  not  understand  whether  we  are  referring 
to  land  or  water.  Boston's  first  mayor,  the  father 
of  Wendell  Phillips,  lived  in  this  old  locality 
around  Beacon  Hill,  in  a  house  which  is  still 
standing  at  the  corner  of  Chestnut  and  Walnut 
Streets.  I  can  remember  when  the  summit  of 
Beacon  Hill  ran  up  behind  the  State  House  and 
was  about  even  with  the  base  of  the  dome;  but 
this  hill  was  afterwards  graded 
down  about  eighty  feet,  bringing 
it  to  its  present  level,  and  the 
material  used  for  filling  in  the 
low  lands. 

The  year  1847  was  a  notable 
year  in  Cambridge,  for  in  that 
year,  Professor  Louis  Agassiz 
came  among  us.  Several  charac- 
teristic anecdotes  are  told  about 
36 


Louis  Agassiz 


In   Boston   and   Cambridge 

this  lovable  and  inspiring  man  and  teacher.  His 
wife  called  out  to  him  in  horror  one  evening,  on 
opening  her  closet  door,  "Louis!  there  is  a  snake 
in  my  shoe!"  and  there  came  back  the  agonized 
cry,  "Leezie,  Leezie,  where  are  the  other  five?" 
It  was  in  1847,  also,  that  Dr.  0.  W.  Holmes,  a 
native  of  whom  Cambridge  is  always  proud,  be- 


Oltveb  Wendell  Holmes 

came  professor  in  the  Harvard  Medical  School. 
Longfellow  and  Lowell  were  married  and  living 
in  their  respective  Cambridge  homes  at  this  time. 
And  "Sweet  Auburn,"  a  quiet  rural  spot,  which 
in  previous  years  had  been  a  favorite  and  refresh- 
ing resort  for  Cambridge  and  Boston  people,  had 
been  transformed  into  Mount  Auburn  cemetery. 
At  that  time,  according  to  my  early  school- 
87 


Days    and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

mate,  Lowell,  there  were  living  old  people  in  the 
region  of  Copp's  Hill  who  thought  that  the  United 
States  had  made  a  mistake  in  parting  from  Great 
Britain.  The  advent  of  new  peoples  with  foreign 
speech  and  customs  has  swept  aside  many  old 
traditions  and  transformed  whole  regions.  But 
for  us,  who  survive  and  who  have  seen  the  great 
transformations,  there  is  still  a  lingering  interest 
in  the  old  landmarks  and  old  memories  which  are 
but  faintly  recalled  in  these  scattered  reminis- 
cences. 


38 


RECOLLECTIONS    OF   OLD    BOSTON 

From  a  Conversation  with  a  Boston  Lady  of  the  Period 

In  my  childhood  I  lived  on  Pearl  Street.  My 
home  in  those  early  days  was  a  delightful  old 
house  with  a  large  garden  at  the  rear,  which  had 
been  given  to  my  father  and  mother  at  the  time 
of  their  marriage.  It  fronted  on  Pearl  Street, 
looking  toward  Oliver  Street,  but  the  garden 
extended  back  to  Atkinson  Street,  a  thoroughfare 
which  I  believe  has  long  since  vanished  in  the 
process  of  transforming  that  part  of  the  city  into 
the  wholesale  business  district  of  Boston. 

In  the  early  forties  Pearl  Street  was  a  delightful 
residence  section,  a  region  of  fine  old  houses  with 
a  succession  of  beautiful  gardens,  for  which,  indeed, 
it  was  famous.  I  might  almost  say  that  my  child- 
hood was  spent  in  a  garden,  for  the  custom  of 
leaving  the  city  during  all  or  part  of  the  summer 
months  had  not  yet  seized  upon  us.  Although, 
to  be  sure,  a  few  persons  or  families  more  restless 
than  others,  or  envying  friends  who  had  travelled, 
sought  the  mountains  or  shore  for  a  protracted 
absence  of  perhaps  one  week,  these  were  rare 
exceptions,  at  least  until  after  1844,  and  so  we 
were  wont,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  remain  at 
home  the  year  around.  Thus,  in  the  summer 
months  much  of  the  recreation  and  enjoyment 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

of  the  people  of  Boston  were  derived  from  the 
generous  gardens  which  at  that  period  were 
characteristic  of  nearly  all  of  the  better  residence 
sections  of  the  city. 

In  those  days  Pearl  Street,  strange  as  it  may 
now  seem,  was  a  delightful  place  of  residence  in 
summer.  It  was  near  the  water  front  and 
received  the  cooling  breezes  of  the  bay.  The  blue 
waters  of  the  harbor  were  visible  but  a  few  steps 
from  my  home,  and  it  was  only  necessary  to  cross 
High  Street  (which  as  a  child  I  did  with  much 
trepidation)  to  quickly  reach  the  shore. 

There  was  considerable  business  transacted 
along  the  Boston  wharves,  at  the  period  to 
which  I  refer,  for  the  city  at  that  period 
possessed  an  extensive  foreign  and  coast  trade, 
but  there  was  little  outward  evidence  of  these  in 
noise  and  bustle.  Here  and  there  appeared  the 
tall  masts  and  spars  of  brigs  and  schooners,  and 
there  were  many  white  sails  off  shore,  but  steam- 
boats had  not  yet  come  into  general  use  for 
commercial  purposes,  and  life  along  the  water 
front  was  subdued,  quiet  and  deliberate.  The 
wharves  and  mansions  of  Portsmouth,  N.  H.,  as 
they  appear  today,  seem  to  me  to  resemble  in  some 
respects  the  Boston  of  1840. 

My  childhood  in  the  old  mansion  on  Pearl 
Street  and  life  in  the  great  garden  are  all  delightful 
recollections.  Many  years  later,  while  in  Chelten- 
ham, England,  I  called  at  the  house  of  a  friend 
residing  in  that  city,  and  my  surprise  may  be  im- 
agined when  I  suddenly  observed  as  I  stood  upon  the 
40 


Recollections   of   Old   Boston 

steps  that  the  house  was  almost  an  exact  counter- 
part of  my  old  home  upon  Pearl  Street  in  Boston. 

The  school  which  I  attended  was  near  our 
house;  a  plain  little  school  house  it  was,  without 
adornment,  except  for  the  hollyhocks  which  in  this 
season  blossomed  beside  it.  Before  long  the 
encroachments  of  business  began  to  be  apparent, 
however,  and  though  the  old  residents  bitterly 
opposed  the  change,  by  the  late  forties  warehouses 
intruded  where  gardens  and  old  homes  had  been, 
and  Pearl  Street  was  speedily  appropriated  by  the 
expanding  business  interests  of  the  city. 

I  was  born  in  Boston,  but  John  Quincy  Adams 
(who  died  in  1848)  and  my  father's  aunts  resided 
in  Quincy.  I  recollect  clearly,  even  though  I 
was  a  very  small  child,  driving  to  the  Quincy 
home  for  a  Sunday  visit  to  these  relatives. 

We  lived  in  those  days  in  very  simple  fashion. 
All  dresses  were  made  in  the  household;  the  stuffs 
were  bought  in  the  shops,  which  were  located 
principally  on  Washington  Street.  I  recollect 
that  my  mother  made  most  of  her  purchases  at 
Mr.  Daniel's  store.  Sewing  women  came  to  the 
houses,  and  worked  as  seamstresses  do  today, 
but  these  women  not  only  made  the  dresses  for 
the  women  and  girls  of  the  household,  but  a  tail- 
oress  came  also,  who  made  the  coats  and  trousers 
for  the  boys.  That  was  long  before  the  era  of 
ready  made  clothing  for  either  sex.  The  dresses 
of  that  period,  however,  were  generally  very 
simple  and  required  not  more  than  a  day  and  a 
half  to  make.    Those  for  example  which  were 

41 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

worn  everyday  were  merely  skirts  "fulled  on  to  the 
waist."  One  good  dress  of  silk  or  satin  or  damask 
"for  best"  (which  usually  lasted  for  many  years) 
and  a  very  meagre  wardrobe  of  gowns  for  daily  use 
was  all  that  the  better  class  of  women  expected,  or 
often  possessed,  in  the  Boston  of  the  thirties  and 
forties. 

The  furs  we  wore  when  we  went  visiting  or 
sleighing,  came,  as  I  recall  it,  principally  from 
France.  I  remember  well  a  set  of  sable  which  as 
a  young  woman  I  possessed,  and  which  I  know 
came  from  that  country.  In  extremely  cold 
weather  the  men  wore  skin  caps,  of  beaver  and 
other  furs,  and  coats  of  buffalo  skins. 

In  my  youth,  and  indeed  until  after  the  Civil 
War,  nearly  all  our  feminine  needs  were  supplied 
by  importations  from  abroad.  Hosiery  and  dress 
goods  other  than  calicoes  and  ginghams, — such 
goods,  I  mean,  as  poplins  and  silks — came  from 
England,  Ireland  and  France.  Russian  linens 
were  especially  fine,  and  as  some  of  my  family 
were  engaged  in  foreign  trade  we  were  favored  in 
securing  goods  of  this  kind.  I  recall  that  my 
mother  had  been  presented  at  her  marriage  with 
a  very  beautiful  set  of  household  linen,  made 
in  Russia,  in  which  was  woven  the  American 
Eagle. 

While  the  war  was  in  progress  much  discussion 
occurred  over  the  extensive  use  by  Northern 
women  of  English  and  foreign  goods,  to  which 
much  opposition  was  shown,  and  it  was  said  that 
we  Americans  should  patronize  home  industries. 
42 


Recollections  of   Old   Boston 

One  day  I  met  on  the  Common  James  L.  Little, 
who  was  the  manager  of  the  Lawrence  Mills. 

"If  you  want  us  to  buy  American  dress  goods," 
I  said,  "you  must  make  stuffs  suitable  for  our  use. 
You  cannot  expect  New  England  women  to  wear 
calicoes  and  prints  in  winter." 

"That  is  true,"  he  replied,  "but  we  are  too  busy 
with  the  manufacture  of  prints  to  make  any  other 
kind  of  goods." 

At  that  period  our  manufacturers  were  far 
behind  the  needs  of  the  nation,  and  I  presume 
in  some  classes  of  goods  the  same  condition  exists 
today. 

At  this  distance  even  to  the  few  who  remain 
to  personally  recall  it,  the  decade  from  1840  to 
1850  looks  dim  and  remote.  Senator  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge,  in  his  recently  published  "Memories," 
summed  up  most  effectively  the  change  which  was 
impending  at  that  period: 

"The  year  1850  stood  on  the  edge  of  a  new 
time,  but  the  old  time  was  still  visible  from  it, 
still  indeed  prevailed  about  it.  The  men  and 
women  of  the  elder  time  with  the  old  feelings 
and  habits  were  still  numerous  and  for  the  most 
part  quite  unconscious  that  their  world  was  slip- 
ping away  from  them.  Hence,  the  atmosphere 
of  our  old  stone  house,  and  indeed  of  Boston 
itself  was  still  an  eighteenth  century  atmosphere, 
if  we  accept  Sir  Walter  Besant's  statement  that 
the  eighteenth  century  ended  in  1837.  But  at 
all  events  it  was  entirely  different  from  anything 
to  be  found  today.  Thus  it  happened  that  the 
43 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

year  1850  came  at  the  dawn  of  the  new  time 
now  plainly  recognized,  but  the  meaning  and 
scope  of  which  are  as  yet  little  understood,  and 
the  result  of  which  can  only  be  darkly  guessed, 
because  the  past  has  but  a  dim  light  to  throw  on 
the  untried  paths  ahead." 


44 


THE    OLD    BOSTON    WATER    FRONT* 

1840-1850 

By  Fhank  H.  Fobbbs 

The  newer  and  greater  Boston  that  is  to  be 
dawns  upon  my  vision.  There  are  broad  avenues 
and  boulevards,  terraces,  parks,  Charlesgates 
East  and  Charlesgates  West,  the  Acropolis  on 
Mars  Hill  reproduced  on  Beacon  Hill.  I  can  see 
huge  and  stately  docks  of  stone  and  steel  and 
brick  on  the  North  shore  and  on  the  South  shore, 
and  a  fleet  of  ocean  steam  Leviathans,  their 
sombre  smokestacks  outlining  the  horizon.  But 
you  will  pardon  an  old  man  of  three  score  and 
ten  if  he  fondly  turns  back  to  another  picture — 
inexpressibly  dearer  to  him  from  old  associations 
— the  picture  of  the  older,  lesser  Boston,  with  its 
crooked  streets  and  narrow  ways,  the  Common 
and  the  Frog  Pond. 

In  one  respect  at  least  the  older  Boston  sur- 
passed the  Boston  of  today.  The  pride  of  the 
city  more  than  half  a  century  ago  was  its  water 
front  stretching  from  north  to  south,  indented 
and  built  up  with  spacious  docks  and  wharves, 
with  a  forest  of  masts  and  spars,  and  a  wealth  of 
snowy  canvas  such  as  no  other  city  in  the  Union 
could  boast  of. 

In  the  forties  Boston,  so  far  as  the  extent  and 
variety  of  its  commerce  was  concerned,  had  no 

♦An  unpublished  address  delivered  before  the  Bostonian  Society. 
45 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

t/equal  among  the  cities  of  the  United  States. 
There  was  no  quarter  of  the  civilized  or  uncivil- 
ized globe  in  which  the  enterprise,  energy,  and 
pluck  of  a  Boston  merchant  and  a  Boston  ship- 
master did  not  find  an  entrance,  or  from  which  a 
wealth  of  commerce  did  not  return.  Cooper, 
the  novelist,  whose  works  were  never  regarded  as 
the  standard  of  truth,  attempted  to  elevate 
New  York  at  the  expense  of  Boston;  but  facts 
^  tell  another  story.  For  more  than  twenty  years, 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Baltimore,  as  well 
as  other  business  centers,  depended  largely  upon 
Boston  for  the  products  of  far-off  countries.  With 
many  of  the  leading  ports  in  Europe,  Asia,  Africa, 
South  America,  the  West  India  Islands  and  the 
West  Coast,  Boston  fairly  had  the  monopoly  of 
trade.  The  decade,  from  1844  to  1854,  wit- 
nessed the  culmination  of  old  Boston's  prosperity 
as  the  leader  in  foreign  trade. 

The  long  stretch  of  improved  water  front,  with 
its  spacious  wharves  and  docks,  was  the  natural 
outcome  of  the  commercial  enterprise  of  the 
Boston  of  this  period.  In  these  the  pride  of  the 
city  was  fully  justified  as  well  as  in  the  fine  ware- 
houses which  flanked  them.  No  port  from  the 
capes  of  Florida  to  Casco  Bay  could  boast  of  such 
wharves  and  docks.  Before  the  filling  of  South 
Cove,  the  wharf  and  dock  property  represented 
fully  one-fifth  of  the  areas  of  old  Boston.  From 
what  is  now  Dover  Street  bridge  on  the  south,  to 
Charlestown  bridge  on  the  north,  was  an  unbroken 
water  front  available  for  wharf  and  dock  purposes. 
46 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

In  this  paper,  however,  I  shall  consider  only  such 
wharves  as  were  in  use  for  commercial  purposes. 

Upon  the  south,  the  first  wharf,  as  I  recall  it, 
was  Wales  Wharf,  leading  off  from  Sea  Street,  with 
its  quaint  and  venerable  looking  block  of  stone 
warehouses.  This  was  the  property  of  T.  B. 
Wales  &  Co.,  then,  and  for  years,  one  of  the  lead- 
ing firms  in  Boston,  having  foreign  connections, 
as  well  as  large  ship  owners.  This  wharf  was 
exclusively  used  by  them. 

Next  was  Russia  Wharf,  famous  sixty  years 
ago  and  owned  by  the  Inches.  This  wharf  was 
largely  utilized  for  foreign  trade.  Liverpool 
and  Fort  Hill  Wharves  were  next.  The  latter 
for  years  was  the  terminal  point  for  vessels  from 
the  British  Provinces.  Next  north  was  Arch 
Wharf.  This  was  largely  devoted  to  the  West 
India  trade  and  trade  with  the  Provinces.  It  had 
some  notable  occupants  in  its  day,  such  as  Chas. 
Cole,  Thos.  Tremlett,  Sheafe  and  Melledge. 

Foster's  Wharf,  or  Wharves,  came  next;  there 
were  two  of  them,  north  and  south.  I  am  not 
certain  whether  this  property  was  incorporated 
or  whether  it  was  individual.  This  wharf,  or 
rather  these  wharves,  did  the  largest  business 
under  the  occupancy  of  John  H.  Pearson  &  Co. 
They  were  large  ship  owners,  and  had  an  extensive 
foreign  trade,  particularly  with  Europe.  Pearson 
had  a  long  lease.  He  started  a  line  of  packets  for 
Philadelphia,  and  later  one  for  New  Orleans. 
The  latter  line  was  composed  of  four  ships,  con- 
sidered large  at  that  period,  built  at  Medford, 
48 


The    Old    Boston    Water    Front 

expressly  for  packet  service,  the  Norfolk,  Suffolk, 
Middlesex  and  Essex.  Neither  line  was  successful. 
Pearson's  lease  terminated  September  30,  1845, 
when  he  took  a  ten-years  lease  of  Long  Wharf. 
The  last  large  ships  that  loaded  there  were  the 
Lochinvar  for  New  Orleans,  and  the  Michigan  for 
Mobile.  Pearson  did  not  make  a  fortune  out  of 
his  lease,  and  the  property  had  no  particular 
distinction  after  that  till  it  came  into  the  posses- 
sion of  the  present  holders.  Parties  who  knew 
Foster's  wharf  in  1844  would  hardly  recognize 
it  as  it  is  in  1894. 

Rowe's  Wharf  has  a  very  interesting  history 
in  the  past,  and  is  the  only  large  wharf  south  of 
Union  Street  that  has  not  been  shorn  of  its 
proportions  by  the  improvement  consequent 
upon  the  laying  out  of  Atlantic  Avenue.  The 
same  old  block  of  stores  is  still  standing.  It  was 
a  corporation  when  I  first  knew  it,  and  probably 
for  years  before,  the  principal  stockholders,  as 
well  as  occupants,  being  the  Richardsons  and 
Cunninghams,  large  importers  of  fruit  and  other 
products  from  the  south  of  Europe.  The  Cun- 
ninghams owned  the  one-time  famous  mail  packet, 
the  big  Harbinger,  running  between  Fayal  and 
Boston.  She  was  for  years  one  of  the  features  of 
the  wharf.  Rowe's  Wharf  did  a  large  transient 
business,  and  its  management  was  very  popular 
with  ship  owners  and  ship  masters.  In  1848 
Allen  &  Weltch  took  a  long  lease  of  this  wharf, 
and  transferred  their  lines  of  southern  packets 
thence  from  Commercial  Wharf.  During  their 
4  49 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

tenure  the  wharf  did  an  immense  and  profitable 
business. 

Next  comes  India  Wharf,  incorporated  ninety 
years  ago,  the  first  in  order  going  north  of  the 
grand  old  wharves  of  Boston.  The  East  India 
business  was  largely  represented  by  the  occu- 
pants of  the  respective  stores.  As  I  remember 
them  in  the  middle  forties,  there  were  the  Austins, 
the  Parkmans,  the  Lymans,  and  the  Wiggles- 
worths.  The  West  India  trade  was  represented 
by  Benjamin  Burgess  &  Sons,  Philo  S.  Shelton, 
Atkins  &  Freeman,  Homer  &  Sprague.  Other 
foreign  trades  were  represented  by  Boardman  & 
Pope.  Gardner  &  Co.,  John  L.  Gardner,  Michael 
Simpson,  Winsor  Fay,  R.  B.  Storer,  N.  F.  Cun- 
ningham &  Co.,  at  one  time  the  leading  cotton 
merchants  of  Boston,  were  there  for  years.  Not 
the  least  important  occupant  was  old  Sam  Prince, 
the  sail-maker.  The  wharfage  income  mainly 
accrued  from  the  occupants  of  stores,  but  the 
wharf  did  a  large  transient  business.  Its  annual 
income  from  all  sources  was  not  much  less  than 
$40,000. 

The  east  side  of  India  Street,  from  India 
Wharf,  was  practically  a  wharf  for  its  entire  length. 
Here  were  to  be  found  regular  packets  between 
Boston  and  New  York,  Hartford,  New  London, 
Fairhaven,  New  Bedford  and  Nantucket.  The 
berth  adjoining  India  Wharf  was  generally  occu- 
pied by  large  vessels  belonging  to  John  L.  Gard- 
ner. The  last  of  these  that  I  remember  was  the 
brig  Pleiades,  and  associated  with  her  is  the  fact 
50 


The    Old    Boston    Water    Front 

that  she  was  sold  at  auction  by  Thos.  W.  Sears, 
the  most  accomplished  auctioneer  of  his  day  in 
Boston;  and  this  was  the  last  sale  he  ever  made. 
Another  fact  was  that  the  Pleiades  brought  the 
last  full  cargo  to  Boston  of  pepper  and  cockroaches. 
The  Central  Wharf  and  Wet  Dock  Co.  was 
chartered  in  1815.  For  a  great  many  reasons 
Central  Wharf  was  the  most  conspicuous  and 
the  most  attractive  of  all  the  old  Boston  wharves. 
In  the  first  place  it  had  the  largest  continuous 
block  of  warehouses  in  the  country.  Its  docks 
on  the  north  and  south  side  were  continuous  from 
India  Street  to  the  channel.  Then  it  had  the 
most  varied  commerce.  Its  merchants,  and  their 
ships  and  cargoes  represented  the  trade  and  prod- 
ucts of  every  quarter  of  the  globe.  Let  me  give 
the  names  of  some  of  them — names  now  almost 
forgotten,  but  the  very  sound  of  which  recalls  the 
grand  old  era  of  Boston's  commerce,  when  we  did 
our  own  importing  direct,  and  under  the  old  flag — 
Perkins  &  Co.,  Mark  Healey,  Samuel  C.  Gray, 
Atkinson  &  Rollins,  Whitney,  Benj.  Bangs, 
Bryant  &  Sturgis,  Curtis  &  Stevenson,  Eager, 
Kahler,  Ray  &  Wheeler,  the  Foster's,  Wm.  F. 
Weld  &  Co.,  Wainwright  &  Tappan,  Stanton, 
Fiske  &  Nichols,  Joshua  Blake,  Barnard,  Adams 
&  Co.,  Wm.  Worthington  &  Co.,  J.  V.  Bacon, 
Chandler,  Howard  &  Co.,  Joseph  Ballisted, 
Zacariah  Jellison,  Isaac  Williamson,  Herbert  C. 
Hooper,  Hill  &  Chamberlain,  Fiske  &  Rice,  H.  &. 
R.  Williams,  Greeley  &  Guild.  The  Mediter- 
ranean trade  was  a  prominent  feature,  and  there 
51 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

was  scarcely  a  day  in  the  year  that  a  vessel  from 
one  or  more  of  the  Mediterranean  ports  was  not 
discharging.  The  Mediterranean  fleet  itself  was 
conspicuous,  comprising  some  of  the  finest  clip- 
pers afloat,  like  the  Nautilus,  the  Martha  Wash- 
ington, the  Emma  Isadora,  and  the  Griffin. 

The  fruit  season  was  a  very  interesting  one, 
particularly  to  the  boys  on  Wednesday  and  Satur- 
day afternoons.  Two-thirds  of  the  length  on  the 
south  side  would  be  represented  by  alternate 
cargoes  of  oranges  and  lemons,  figs  and  raisins. 
Central  Wharf  had  two  features,  permanent  the 
year  around;  huge  piles  of  brimstone  on  the 
south  side,  and  dyewoods  on  the  north.  Long 
Wharf  had  no  particular  features  except  the  old 
salt  stores,  and  the  Hingham  Station  Packet, 
which  was  the  landing  place  for  old  Commodore 
Sturgis,  of  revenue  cutter  fame,  and  the  point 
of  arrival  and  departure  of  the  Custom  House 
boarding  officers,  under  old  Kettel,  and  the  news 
boat  in  command  of  Clive.  Long  Wharf  was  the 
terminal  of  fines  of  packets  to  Richmond  and 
New  York,  and  also  of  Alland  &  Troy's  Phila- 
delphia packets.  That  was  in  the  days  of  Elihu 
Reed,  Bangs,  Rice  &  Thaxter,  and  Williams. 
Long  Wharf  was  a  favorite  wharf  for  excursions 
and  fishing  parties,  and  from  which  the  Mam- 
moth Cod  Association,  one  hundred  strong,  de- 
parted on  their  annual  trips. 

Under  the  management  of  old  Elijah  Loring  it 
had  a  sort  of  sleepy  existence.  In  1845,  however, 
\t  took  a  new  start  when  John  H.  Pearson  took  a 

52 


The    Old    Boston    Water    Front 

ten- years  lease  at  $50,000  a  year,  and  the  United 
States  erected  the  first  block  of  bonded  ware- 
houses. The  price  paid  was  regarded  as  enor- 
mous, but  Pearson  was  glad  to  renew  the  lease  at 
its  expiration,  and  during  his  fifteen- years  tenure 
it  was  undoubtedly  the  best  paying  wharf  property 
in  Boston.  Brimmer's  T  was  a  sort  of  leg  set  off 
from  Long  Wharf,  but  a  noted  wharf  fifty  and 
more  years  ago.  In  the  early  thirties  Martin 
Brimmer  erected  a  block  of  granite  stores  at  the 
upper  end.  This  block  was  occupied  by  Brimmer, 
Sprague,  Soule  &  Co.,  Bramhall  &  Howe,  and 
Sims  and  Eaton,  with  Lombard's  sail  loft  over- 
head. Fifty  years  ago  T  Wharf  was  the  noted 
fish  wharf  of  Boston,  with  old  Joe  Locke  of  savory 
memory  as  its  presiding  genius.  As  you  entered 
from  Long  Wharf,  on  the  left  was  the  largest 
establishment  for  packing  dry  fish  in  Boston. 
T  Wharf  was  the  center  of  a  large  trade  with  the 
British  Provinces,  and  was  the  grand  depot  for 
grindstones.  T  Wharf  is  entitled  to  the  credit 
of  being  the  first  wharf  in  Boston  proper  for  the 
departure  of  ocean  steamers.  The  first  New  York 
outside  line,  with  the  steamer  Ontario,  started  from 
here;  then  the  Philadelphia  line  with  the  Kensing- 
ton, then  the  Halifax  line,  then  the  Metropolitan 
New  York  line,  and  then  the  Savannah  line. 

Commercial  Street,  from  Long  Wharf  to  Com- 
mercial Wharf,  like  India  Street,  was,  on  the 
east  side,  practically  a  wharf,  and  about  the 
busiest  locality  in  Boston.  First  there  was  City 
Wharf,  the  outcome  of  the  genius  of  the  older 
53 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

Quincy,  and  a  part  of  the  original  Market  scheme. 
Then  came  Mercantile  Wharf,  the  Baltimore, 
Philadelphia  and  Eastern  packet  piers.  In  1832 
City  Wharf  was  leased  for  a  period  of  twenty  years 
to  a  syndicate  of  whom  Wm.  B.  Reynolds  was 
the  head;  later  the  lease  was  transferred  to  the 
Market  Bank,  who  held  it  till  the  property  was 
sold  by  the  city  in  1852.  The  stores  were  in- 
cluded in  the  lease.  At  one  time  I  had  from 
Josiah  Stickney,  late  president  of  the  bank,  the 
amount  of  the  lease  and  the  net  income  above  its 
earnings  to  the  bank.  At  any  rate  it  was  im- 
mensely profitable  for  the  bank.  The  sale  of 
this  property  at  public  auction  in  Fanueil  Hall, 
in  1852,  was  long  remembered. 

Mercantile  Wharf  and  the  adjoining  piers,  at 
the  period  of  which  I  speak,  was  under  lease  to 
Horace  Scudder  &  Co.  The  packet  lines  to  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore  and  Washington 
represented  fully  a  hundred  sail  of  vessels, 
barques,  brigs  and  schooners,  and  a  large  portion 
of  this  fleet  centered  in  this  locality.  The  sailing 
days  were  Wednesdays  and  Saturdays,  and  on 
these  days,  especially  during  what  was  known  as 
the  packet  season,  Commercial  Street  was  almost 
impassable.  Commercial  Street  was  practically 
the  center  of  the  grain  trade,  and  there  were 
always  to  be  found  fifteen  or  twenty  vessels  dis- 
charging their  cargoes. 

The  entrance  from  the  harbor  to  the  upper 
north  side  of  Long  Wharf  to  City  Wharf, 
Mercantile  Wharf  and  the  piers  was  between 
54 


The    Old    Boston    Water    Front 

Commercial  and  T  Wharves,  through  a  series  of 
channels  having  very  much  the  appearance  of 
the  canals  of  Venice.  I  think  the  entering  and 
departing  of  this  great  fleet  was  one  of  the  most 
exciting  and  interesting  sights  one  ever  beheld. 
This  was  before  the  days  of  steam  tugs,  when 
vessels  of  any  description,  from  a  ship  to  a 
sloop,  used  to  beat  in  and  out  the  harbor,  and 
yet  I  have  seen  a  whole  fleet  pass  in  through  the 
dock  between  Commercial  Wharf  and  T  wharf, 
under  full  sail,  and  not  let  go  a  halyard  till  the 
berth  at  pier  or  wharf  was  reached. 

Granite  Wharf,  or  Commercial,  was  the  first  of 
the  new  North  End  structures,  and  far  exceeded 
anything  of  the  kind  in  Boston  for  its  impos- 
ing massiveness.  The  old  wharves  were  largely 
depleted  of  tenants  to  furnish  occupants.  The 
East  India  trade,  the  South  American  trade, 
Coast  of  Africa,  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  Mediter- 
ranean, North  of  Europe,  the  West  India  Islands, 
and  the  Spanish  main  were  represented  by  such 
firms  as  Bryant  &  Sturgis,  Robert  G.  Shaw  &  Co., 
Daniel  C.  Bacon,  Henry  Oxhard,  Enoch  Train  & 
Co.,  B.  C.  Clarke  &  Co.,  Wm.  Perkins,  Bates  & 
Thaxton,  Barnard,  Adams  &  Co.,  Beccomb, 
Bartlett  &  Co.,  Hunnewell  &  Pierce,  the  Nicker- 
son's,  P.  &  S.  Sprague,  Ezra  Weston,  and  so  on. 
It  was  a  high-toned  wharf  in  those  days,  and  if  a 
fishing  smack,  or  a  lobster  boat  stuck  its  nose  into 
the  dock,  it  would  have  been  fired  out  instanter. 
But  it  was  some  years  later  that  the  climax  of 
wharf  building  was  reached.  A  syndicate  headed 
55 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

by  Robert  G.  Shaw,  John  Brown,  and  Ammi  C. 
Lombard,  in  the  middle  thirties,  purchased  the  old 
Lewis,  Spear  and  Hancock  Wharves,  and  started 
the  enterprise  of  building  the  new  Lewis  Wharf. 
It  was  at  that  period  of  wildest  speculation  through- 
out the  country,  and  of  course  the  enterprise  was 
in  advance  of  the  times.  The  three  parties  I  have 
named  sunk  nearly  $50,000  each  in  the  under- 
taking. But  when  completed,  it  stood  forth  as 
the  crowning  glory  of  commercial  Boston.  The 
docks  and  wharf  were  spacious,  but  far  beyond 
these  was  the  magnificent  block  of  solid  granite 
warehouses,  that  far  surpassed  anything  of  the 
kind  in  the  United  States,  if  not  in  the  world. 
It  soon  attracted  immigration  from  the  older 
wharves;  some  of  the  wealthiest  of  Boston  mer- 
chants took  possession,  bringing  with  them  their 
large  fleet  of  magnificent  ships — Benjamin  Bangs, 
then  at  the  head  of  the  Valparaiso  trade,  John 
Brown  &  Co.,  William  Appleton  &  Co.,  then  in 
the  China  and  East  India  trade,  Enoch  Train 
&  Co.,  who  possibly  contemplated  his  line  of 
Liverpool  packets,  Sampson  &  Tappan,  Lombard 
&  Whitman,  Isaac  Winslow  &  Sons,  Ammi  C. 
Lombard  &  Co.,  Fairfield,  Lincoln  &  Co.,  John 
L.  Gardner. 

Lewis  Wharf  reached  its  greatness  during  the 
decades  1840-1860.  It  was  during  the  first 
decade  that  Train  established  his  Liverpool  line, 
composed  of  the  finest  ships  that  ever  entered  or 
sailed  from  the  port  of  Boston.  In  the  second 
decade  Glidden  &  Williams  started  their  famous 
56 


The    Old    Boston    Water    Front 

line  of  clippers  from  San  Francisco.  Lewis  Wharf 
was  my  first  love — the  Alma  Mater  front  which 
I  graduated,  if  not  with  high  honors,  with  a  full 
repertoire  of  interesting  memories.  No  old  Ro- 
man ever  answered  his  hail  with  "Civis  Rom- 
anus  sum"  more  proudly  than  I  did  when  I 
said  "I  am  from  Lewis  Wharf." 

North  from  Lewis  were  the  old  Eastern  Rail- 
road Wharf,  Sargent's  Wharf,  May's  Wharf  or 
Union  Wharf,  Lincoln's  Wharf,  the  old  Marine 
railway,  a  distinctive  feature  of  Boston's  com- 
merce, Battery  Wharf,  Constitution,  Aspinwall's, 
Fiske's,  Comer's,  Ripley's,  Grey's,  Bartlett's, 
South  and  North  Wharves,  Clapp's  Wharf, 
Brown's  Wharf  and  Vinal's.  All  these  wharves 
were  important  features  in  the  commerce  of  Bos- 
ton during  the  period  to  which  I  allude.  The 
wharves  gave  character  to  the  merchants,  and 
the  merchants  gave  character  to  the  wharves. 

Fifty  years  ago  the  average  citizen,  clerk, 
schoolboy  and  laborer  could  distinguish  the  mer- 
chant who  did  business  on  the  wharf  from  any 
other  class.  He  would  come  down  in  the  morning, 
stop  at  the  post  office  when  it  was  in  this  building, 
obtain  letters,  then  adjourn  to  Topliff's  Reading 
Room  in  the  basement.  Later  on,  after  the  Ex- 
change was  built,  go  to  the  post  office  there,  then 
to  the  News  Room  overhead,  or  to  the  Insurance 
Offices,  and  digest  them.  Then  go  down  State 
Street  in  line,  turning  through  Merchants  Row 
and  Chatham  Row  or  Commercial  Street,  to  the 
North-End  wharves,  or  through  Kilby,  Broad 
57 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

and  India  Streets,  to  the  South-End  wharves,  and 
at  noon  return  by  the  same  ways  to  high  'Change 
on  State  Street.  The  merchant's  counting  room 
and  warehouse  then  were  where  his  ships  came 
in,  and  he  personally  supervised  their  loading  and 
unloading.  Fifty  years  ago  a  boy  or  clerk  in  an 
up-town  store  regarded  it  as  a  great  privilege  to 
be  sent  down  to  a  wharf  with  a  message,  and  he 
made  the  most  of  his  time. 

Our  wharves  then  were  in  every  truth  water 
parks  for  the  people,  and  contained  no  end  of 
object  lessons.  On  pleasant  Sundays  whole  fam- 
ilies resorted  thither.  On  holidays  or  special 
gala  occasions,  they  were  immensely  attractive; 
each  vied  with  the  other.  Every  description  of 
craft,  from  a  sloop  to  a  full  rigged  ship,  was  rich 
in  the  display  of  canvas  and  bunting.  It  was  a 
picture  that  at  this  date  can  be  more  easily  imag- 
ined than  described. 

The  "wharfingers"  were  men  of  no  mean 
standing  with  the  merchants  and  ship  owners. 
They  bore  the  same  relative  position  to  wharf 
corporations  that  today  general  managers  bear 
to  railroad  corporations.  Maccey  of  Rowe's, 
Brown  of  India,  Blaney  of  Central,  Loring  of 
Long,  Parker  of  City,  Hersey  of  Commercial, 
Davison  of  Lewis,  Pierce  of  Union,  Homer 
of  Battery,  Elwell  of  Constitution,  Wilder  of 
Comey's,  Redding  of  Brown's,  were  autocrats 
in  their  way,  and  from  their  decision  there  was 
no  appeal. 

The  first  break  in  our  continuous  water  front 
58 


The    Old    Boston    Water    Front 

was  in  the  thirties,  when  the  dock  between  Cen- 
tral and  Long  was  taken  for  the  Custom  House. 
The  next,  in  the  fifties,  when  City  Wharf  was 
sold,  and  when  the  Mercantile  Wharf  block  and 
the  State  Street  block  were  built.  The  last  was 
in  the  sixties,  when  Atlantic  Avenue  was  con- 
structed. Then,  and  forever,  departed  the  tradi- 
tional glory  of  the  old  wharves  of  Boston. 


59 


Mrs.  Julia  Wabd  Hcwa 


THE  OLD  ROSEWOOD  DESK 

By  Maud  Howe  Elliott 

There  never  was  so  beautiful,  so  wonderful  a 
writing  desk  in  the  world  as  my  mother's  old 
rosewood  secretary.  It  has  four  wide  deep 
drawers  in  the  lower  part  and  one  secret  hiding- 
place.  When  you  wish  to  write,  you  unlock  and 
let  down  the  front  or  "flap,"  faced  with  faded 
blue  velvet — then  you  catch  your  breath — the 
sight  of  that  marvellous  interior,  with  its  myste- 
rious suggestions  of  romance,  thrills  you  still  after 
years  of  familiarity.  First,  there  is  the  mirror 
at  the  back,  where  you  can  see  your  face,  where 
she  saw  her  face  when  it  was  young,  without  a 
line  of  care,  her  alabaster  forehead,  red-gold  hair, 
eyes  like  beryls,  just  as  you  can  see  them  today 
in  Joseph  Ames'  portrait  of  her. 

The  desk,  lined  with  pale  yellow  satinwood,  has 
curving  ornaments  and  small,  neatly  turned  knobs 
of  dark  rosewood.  It  has  fascinating  secret 
drawers,  that  smell  faintly  of  dried  rose-leaves 
and  lavender;  in  one  of  these  I  found  a  packet  of 
time-stained  papers.  The  first — a  mere  scrap 
of  cream-colored  parchment — set  my  heart  beat- 
ing, put  my  imagination  to  work,  for  it  tells  a 
story  of  old  Boston.  The  writing  is  crabbed, 
the  ink  pale  bronze,  the  spelling  quaint: 
61 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

July — 

Mrs.  Ward  to  E.  Weld  dett  for  horses  and  shay. 
To  Boston  five  times  and  horse  ones  to  blue  hill  $7. 
19th.     Had  the  horse  alone  but  did  not  use  it  (no 

charge) 

22d     To  Boston  1.50 

24       To  the  neck  1.25 

5  chickens  at  2  shillings  apiece  1.66 

Ditto  hen  and  chickens  5.50 

Received  payment  in  full 

Ebenezer  Weld. 

"Nothing  but  an  old  bill,"  you  say? 

Yes,  something  more,  the  clew  to  a  bit  of  family 
history.  It  tells  us  that  in  the  pleasant  summer 
weather  of  this  year  without  a  date  my  beautiful 
young  grandmother,  Mrs.  Ward,  came  on  a  visit 
to  her  mother,  Mrs.  Cutler,  who  lived  in  the  old 
colonial  house  in  Jamaica  Plain  where  Mr.  George 
Wheelwright,  Jr.,  now  lives;  that  these  two  gay 
and  lovely  ladies  drove  to  Boston,  to  the  "neck," 
to  "blue  hill."  I  warrant  they  took  whatever 
pleasure  was  "coming  to  them,"  in  the  same 
joyous  spirit  of  thankfulness  for  life  that  marks 
those  of  their  descendants,  of  whom  we  say  "he" 
or  "she"  is  a  Cutler.  Perhaps  there  was  room  in 
Ebenezer 's  shay  for  Mrs.  Ward's  little  daughter 
Julia,  to  whom  this  rosewood  desk  belonged. 
If  Ebenezer  had  been  as  exact  as  he  was  honest — 
I  thank  him  now  for  not  having  charged  for  the 
horse  the  day  it  was  "had"  and  not  "used" — 
if  he  had  dated  his  bill  properly,  we  might  fix 
the  year  of  my  mother's  first  visit  to  Boston,  and 
determine  whether  or  no  the  earliest  of  her  many 
62 


The   Old   Rosewood   Desk 

jaunts  to  the  city  was  made  with  mother  and 
grandmother  in  Ebenezer's  shay.  I  am  sure  it 
was  of  the  same  genus  as  the  One-Hoss  Shay, 
painted  yellow,  lined  with  blue  broadcloth,  swung 
low  and  roomy  between  two  vast  wheels. 

What  visions  this  old  bill  evokes!  The  flush 
of  those  past  pleasures  whose  price  it  lecords 
glows  rosy  through  the  dusky  years.  I  am  glad 
Grandmother  Ward  paid  for  those  chickens, 
whether  they  were  roasted,  baked  in  a  pie  or  added 
to  Great-grandmother  Cutler's  hen-roost.  Grand- 
mother Cutler  had  to  practice  economy;  it  was 
only  fitting  that  when  her  daughter,  who  had 
married  a  rich  New  York  banker,  came  to  stay 
she  should  "stand  treat"  for  the  outings  and  the 
poultry  Ebenezer  furnished. 

As  I  lay  the  scrap  of  yellowed  paper  back  in 
its  shallow  drawer,  I  look  up  at  the  portrait  of 
Grandmother  Ward  over  the  chimneypiece,  oppo- 
site the  rosewood  desk,  and  put  the  question  we 
ask  of  each  old  portrait  that  we  love : 

"You  liked  your  life?" 

The  brown  eyes  answer  with  their  sweet  half- 
distant  smile: 

"Yes,  I  liked  it  all!" 

She  died  at  twenty-seven,  having  borne  seven 
children:  six  of  them  lived  to  grow  up.  The  little 
Julia,  though  only  five  at  the  time  of  her  mother's 
death,  carried  through  life  the  happiest  memories 
of  her  and  remembered,  oh!  how  faithfully,  all 
her  little  lessons  in  behavior. 

The  next  document  in  the  bundle  of  old  papers 
63 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

is  a  letter  from  Grandmother  Cutler,  written  in  a 
clear  strong  hand  on  a  double  sheet,  folded  and 
sealed  with  a  red  wafer,  addressed  to  the  care  of 
Samuel  Ward,  New  York;  it  has  neither  envelope, 
express  nor  post  mark.  The  letter  was  sent  by 
a  friend,  for  this  was  before  the  days  of  stamps, 
when  postage  was  a  heavy  item. 

Jamaica  Plain,  Tuesday  afternoon. 
My  dear  Daughter, 

I  send  you  this  notice,  by  way  of  relieving  your 
mind  from  your  generally  kind  anxiety  respecting 
me.  I  am  tolerably  well  for  me — but  oh,  the 
weather,  the  weather!  When  will  it  be  settled 
again?  I  have  been  out  of  the  house  but  once  since 
the  day  I  entered  it.  I  have  sent  Mr.  Ward,  by  the 
desire  of  the  parson,  Mr.  M.  L.'s  address  before  the 
"Temperance  Society,"  which  I  cannot  but  think 
through  the  interest  he  takes  in  it  calculated  to 
please  him.  I  have  read  every  word  of  it  and  am 
delighted  with  the  performance.  It  is  such  a  march 
of  intellect — and  bears  down  so  forcibly  and  fully 
all  before  it — that  I  think  it  well  calculated  to  be  of 
extensive  benefit  to  all  mankind,  and  only  wish  there 
were  copies  sufficient  to  be  distributed  through  the 
nation.  Also  as  Mr.  Ward  will  not  probably  bear  the 
sound  or  sight  of  a  Demijon  in  his  house,  I  should  be 
glad  of  the  loan  of  one,  as  we  have  a  fine  parcel  of 
"Mazard  Cherries,"  to  make  it  full  of  cherry  bounce 
to  send  to  McAllister  and,  indeed,  I  should  like 
to  send  my  friend  Mr.  Bullock  another.  I  am  going 
to  send  this  down  this  evening  by  Mr.  Chrismas  to 
take  tomorrow  morning  and  hope  my  messenger 
will  bring  me  a  line  in  return  from  you.  Love  to 
all  the  dear  chicks,  believing  me  ever  your  affec- 
tionate and  fond  Mother. 

Love  to  the  Doc.  He  must  read  L's  address  as  he 
loves  genius. 

64 


The   Old   Rosewood   Desk 


Oh,  Grandmother  Cutler,  Grandmother  Cutler, 
dear  daughter  of  Eve!  At  the  moment  you  are 
sending  a  temperance  tract  to  your  sober  son-in- 
law,  Mr.  Ward,  in  New  York,  you  are  plotting 
to  get  hold  of  one  of  his  demijons  to  send  "cherry 
bounce"  to  your  jovial  son-in-law  McAllister  of 
Savannah.  Were  you  too  that  rara  avis,  the  per- 
fect mother-in-law?  It  looks  like  it!  There's 
a  good  deal  in  heredity  after  all.  Your  most  dis- 
tinguished descendant,  the  granddaughter  who 
kept  your  faded  letter  all  her  long  life,  was  well 
loved  by  her  sons-in-law  too. 

The  phrase,  so-and-so  "is  a  Cutler,"  has  be- 
come classic  through  use  to  four  generations,  so 
it  must  stand.  From  some  of  the  letters  in  the 
old  desk,  however,  it  looks  as  if  the  term  were  a 
misnomer.  That  joie  de  vivre,  that  dancing  of 
the  blood  it  implies  never  came  from  the  phleg- 
matic Dutch  Cutlers,  whose  first  ancestor  in  this 
country,  John  de  Mesmekir  of  Holland,  translated 
his  name  into  English.  No,  that  temperament, 
"the  family  champagne,"  came  from  Grand- 
mother Cutler,  in  whose  veins  ran  French  Hugue- 
not blood.  She  was  Mitchell,  a  Virginian  belle, 
niece  of  General  Francis  Marion  "(the  Swamp- 
fox  of  the  Revolution)."  General  Washington 
once  crossed  a  ballroom  to  speak  with  her,  and 
Colonel  Perkins — the  Colonel  Perkins  of  Boston 
— in  talking  of  her  to  my  mother  said: 

"I  remember  your  grandmother  Cutler  as  a 
fascinating  widow  with  a  lovely  voice." 

She  was  married  at  fourteen  to  Colonel  Heme 

5  65 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

and  the  tradition  of  her  grief  at  parting  with  her 
dolls  on  her  wedding  morning  still  survives.  Later 
she  married  Benjamin  Cutler,  Sheriff  Cutler  of 
Massachusetts,  who  died  when  she  was  still 
young,  leaving  her  a  great  family  of  children  and 
little  else  besides.  Another  tradition  clings  to 
her  memory,  vouched  for  by  Colonel  Perkins. 

"At  parties  the  Governor  always  gave  his  arm 
to  Mrs.  Cutler  and  took  her  in  to  supper,  for  though 
she  was  a  widow  and  not  rich,  she  was  tres  grande 
dame  and  much  respected." 

After  Grandmother  Ward's  death  in  1824, 
grandfather  often  brought  his  little  flock  of  moth- 
erless children  to  see  their  Grandmother  Cutler. 
My  mother  always  remembered  a  certain  visit  when 
they  stayed  at  the  Tremont  House,  at  that  time  the 
most  fashionable  hotel  in  Boston.  It  was  a  massive 
building  of  grey  granite,  with  vast  stone  columns 
in  the  Greco-American  style,  that  stood  where 
S.  S.  Pierce's  shop  now  stands,  at  the  corner  of 
Tremont  and  Beacon  Streets.  The  children's 
tutor,  Mr.  Joseph  Cogswell,  later  the  first  libra- 
rian of  the  Astor  Library,  was  of  the  party.  The 
company  at  the  Tremont  House  proved  so  gay, 
the  table  so  rich,  that  Grandfather — a  Puritan 
of  the  Puritans — fled  from  it  in  terror,  taking  his 
little  people  to  the  Mt.  Washington  House  in 
South  Boston.  Dr.  Cogswell  and  the  young  folks 
missed  the  goodies  and  the  frivolities  of  the  Tremont 
House,  though  they  enjoyed  the  fine  view  and 
the  splendid  air  of  the  Mt.  Washington  House, 
which  stood  on  the  high  part  of  the  peninsula 
66 


The  Old  Rosewood  Desk 

that  ends  in  City  Point.  At  that  time  this  prom- 
ised to  become  the  aristocratic  quarter  of  Boston. 
Its  natural  advantages  still  make  the  Back  Bay 
seem  a  poor  place  in  comparison ;  even  the  Charles 
River  Basin  and  the  Fenway  can  not  make  up 
for  that  glorious  outlook  over  Boston  Bay  and 
Harbor. 

Another  bill  dated  Paris,  1844,  made  out  to 
Mme.  Wowe  for  various  embroidered  muslin  caps 
and  dresses!  Who  says  there  is  no  romance  in 
ancient  receipts?  If  the  rosewood  desk  held 
nothing  but  its  old  bills,  I  could  construct  from 
them  its  owner's  intimate  history.  This  French 
bill  is  for  the  layette  of  her  first  child,  born  in 
Rome  in  1844;  it  is  on  crackly  blue  paper,  written 
in  a  pointed  French  hand,  and  bears  the  revenue 
stamp  for  that  year  when  Louis  Philippe  was  on 
the  throne  of  France.  My  father  and  mother 
were  married  in  April,  1843,  and  after  spending 
a  year  and  a  half  in  Europe  they  returned  to 
Boston  in  the  autumn  of  1844.  She  found  many 
changes  in  her  adopted  city. 

The  Mt.  Washington  House,  a  failure  as  a  hotel, 
had  now  become  the  Perkins  Institution  for  the 
Blind.  My  father,  Dr.  Samuel  Gridley  Howe, 
founder  and  director  of  the  Institution,  had  fitted 
up  a  suite  of  rooms  looking  seaward.  This  now 
became  my  mother's  first  home  in  Boston.  In 
those  days  the  only  public  conveyance  between 
South  Boston  and  the  city  was  an  omnibus,  that 
ran  once  in  two  hours.  My  mother  adopted  my 
father's  mottoe,  "Obstacles  are  things  to  over- 
67 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

come,"  and  with  characteristic  energy  set  herself 
to  overcome  the  obstacle  of  distance.  She  was 
determined  to  have  for  herself  and  for  her  family 
all  that  was  best  worth  having  in  Boston,  in  spite 
of  living  at  arm's  length  from  it.  For  her  the 
three  great  goods  that  city  life  could  give  were 
good  preaching,  good  music,  good  society.  I  can 
just  remember  the  old  green  omnibus;  in  winter 
the  floor  was  covered  with  straw  to  keep  the 
passengers'  feet  from  freezing,  in  summer  with 
woven  hemp  mats  made  by  the  pupils  at  our 
Institution.  It  was  chiefly  in  pursuit  of  the 
aforesaid  good  things  that  my  mother  made  her 
endless  trips  to  Boston  in  the  old  green  'bus, 
"but  though  on  pleasure  she  was  bent  she  had  a 
frugal  mind,"  and  she  found  time  to  do  a  deal  of 
family  shopping  besides.  It  was  a  matter  of 
pride  to  us  that  it  was  never  necessary  for  her 
"  to  take  a  sample ' '  with  her.  She  could  ' '  match ' ' 
the  most  delicate  shade  of  silk,  twist  or  trimming 
by  memory  perfectly.  In  her  diary  we  find  de- 
lightful little  memoranda  of  things  bought. 
At  the  foot  of  a  page  describing  a  lecture  of 
Emerson's,  tucked  in,  very  small,  on  the  last  line, 
come  the  items: 

"Buttons  for  Flossie  fourteen  cents. 
White  gloves  two  dollars. 
Trimming  for  Laura  twenty-four  cents. 
Rose  for  Julia  twenty-five  cents." 

While  she  never  to  my  knowledge  copied  these 

items  into  any  separate  book  of  expenses,  they 

68 


The   Old   Rosewood  Desk 

occur  regularly;  how  they  served  her  seems  ob- 
scure. At  the  time  when  she  was  deeply  absorbed 
in  the  study  of  German  philosophy,  page  after 
page  of  the  diary  is  devoted  to  Kant's  Critique 
of  Pure  Reason  or  Hegel's  Logik,  then  faithfully 
added  at  the  bottom  of  the  sheet:  "two  bananas 
for  Julia  and  Flossie  twelve  cents."  At  that 
time  we  only  had  the  fat  red  bananas;  they  were 
cheap  at  six  cents  apiece  and  often  cost  ten. 

The  fruit  trade  was  then  in  the  hands  of  the 
Irish.  The  old  apple  women  still  sat  on  the  Com- 
mon in  their  brave  blue  Kerry  hoods  and  cloaks, 
their  baskets  of  fruit  and  nuts  beside  them.  In 
winter  one  sat  at  the  head,  the  other  at  the  foot 
of  the  "long  coast";  in  summer  they  moved  to 
the  shade  of  the  elms  on  the  Mall.  They  were 
powerful  rivals  to  Marm  Horn,  whose  neat  little 
shop  on  Charles  Street,  between  Chestnut  and 
Mt.  Vernon,  provided  the  best  pickled  limes 
in  Boston;  her  black  molasses  candy  at  a  penny 
a  stick  remains  unique  in  the  history  of  confec- 
tionery. "The  Rovers  of  Boston,"  the  earliest 
association  I  ever  joined,  were  divided  in  their 
views  on  the  question,  "Where  can  the  weekly 
five-cent  allowance  best  be  spent?" 

Governor  Andrew's  daughter  stood  out  for 
Marm  Horn's  shop.  I  was  loyal  to  a  certain  old 
apple  woman.  She  was  a  terrific  figure;  when 
business  was  slack,  she  smoked  a  short  black  pipe; 
her  voice  was  so  gruff  that  I  was  secretly  afraid 
of  her.  Her  eyes  were  sharp  and  merry,  however; 
her  wrinkled  cheeks  were  rosy  as  her  apples,  and 
69 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

there  was  something  bold  and  free  about  the  old 
dame  that  "won  my  allegiance,  though  her  fruit 
was  usually  dusty  and  sometimes  stale.  In  the 
spring,  when  the  weather  was  warm,  the  Rovers 
grew  adventurous  and  hiked  out  to  Mrs.  Hankey's 
shop  in  Jamaica  Plain,  in  search  of  the  cocoanut 
cakes  that  made  her  name  famous  to  many  gen- 
erations of  girls  and  boys. 

Mrs.  Maloney  was  more  enterprising  and  a  good 
deal  younger  than  the  old  apple  women.  She 
wheeled  her  fruit  about  the  streets  in  a  little  cart 
and  I  remember  my  mother  used  to  arrange  her 
morning  walk  to  meet  Mrs.  Maloney  and  buy  the 
day's  supply  of  oranges  from  her.  But  all  this 
was  much  later,  in  the  sixties,  when  we  were 
living  at  19  Boylston  Place.  At  that  time  my 
mother  herself  did  the  marketing  at  the  old 
Boylston  market,  that  stood  at  the  corner  of 
Washington  and  Boylston  Streets.  It  was  a 
source  of  grief  to  her  and  to  many  housekeepers 
when  this  excellent  market  was  done  away  with. 
While  she  was  always  too  profoundly  concerned 
with  moral  questions  to  think  very  deeply  of 
material  ones,  there  ran  through  the  web  of  her 
character  an  odd  little  business  thread,  just  to 
remind  us  that  after  all  she  was  not  only  child  of 
the  muses  but  a  banker's  daughter.  She  never  to 
my  knowledge  destroyed  a  receipt  or  a  business 
paper;  she  drew  her  own  cheques  and  kept  her 
own  bank  account  till  the  end  of  her  life. 

In  the  early  days  at  South  Boston,  she  always 
went  on  Sunday  to  hear  Theodore  Parker  preach 
70 


The   Old   Rosewood   Desk 


at  the  Melodeon.  On  one  occasion  the  sermon 
was  so  long  that  she  lost  the  omnibus  that  should 
have  brought  her  home  in  time  for  Sunday  dinner. 
As  she  entered  the  dining-room  and  found  the 
family  cross  and  hungry  at  dinner's  delay  (for 
no  one  would  have  thought  of  sitting  down  with- 
out her),  she  cried  out,  gaily  forestalling  all 
possible  reproof: 

"Let  no  one  find  fault,  I  have  heard  the  great- 
est thing  I  shall  ever  hear!" 

Parker  had  again  "wielded  the  hammer  of 
Thor,"  spoken  in  his  most  impassioned  style  of 
Daniel  Webster  and  the  rendition  of  the  fugitive 
slave,  Anthony  Burns.  It  was  a  veritable  hand- 
ing round  of  the  fiery  cross;  the  ardent  souls  among 
the  congregation  went  forth,  each  kindled  accord- 
ing to  his  nature  by  the  great  preacher's  zeal. 
In  her  "Reminiscences" 
my  mother  describes  a 
meeting  at  the  time  of 
the  attempted  rendition 
of  the  fugitive  slave, 
Shadrach. 

"It  was  on  this  occa- 
sion," she  writes,  "that  I 
first  saw  Colonel  Higgin- 
son,  who  was  then  known 
as  the  Reverend  Thomas 
Wentworth  Higginson, 
pastor  of  a  religious  so- 
ciety in  Worcester.  The 
part  assigned  to  him  was 
71 


Theodore  Parker 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

to  read  portions  of  the  Scripture  appropriate  to 
the  day.     This  he  did  with  excellent  effect." 

Though  the  date  of  this  meeting  is  not  men- 
tioned, it  must  have  been  in  the  early  fifties.  For 
more  than  half  a  century,  my  mother  and  Colonel 
Higginson  met  frequently  on  the  platform  at 
public  gatherings.  They  became  comrades  in 
arms  in  the  holy  wars  of  Progress  and  Emancipa- 
tion. They  had  many  traits  in  common,  the 
most  vital  perhaps  being  a  profound  sense  of  the 
greater  importance  of  public  matters  as  compared 
to  private  affairs.  Both  were  of  that  small  and 
gallant  company  who  build  the  fortunes  of  the 
State.  Both  fought  for  the  Union,  the  Colonel 
with  the  sword,  my  mother  with  the  pen.  The 
last  meeting  of  the  two  old  comrades  was  at  my 
mother's  ninety-first  birthday  reception.  They 
sat  side  by  side,  sharing  the  honors  due  them  as 
almost  the  last  of  the  great  army  of  leaders  "  God 
sent  us  for  our  need"  in  the  troublous  time  of 
darkness  and  doubt. 

"Music  went  with  me,  fairy  flute  and  viol. 
The  utterance  of  fancies  half  expressed." 

In  these  two  lines  of  her  poem,  the  "Voyage," 
my  mother  records  her  lifelong  delight  in  music. 
In  an  "omnium  gatherum"  drawer  of  the  old 
rosewood  desk  two  "  documents  "  lay  side  by  side 
that  at  first  seem  to  have  little  to  do  with  each 
other;  on  second  thoughts  they  prove  to  be  links 
in  the  same  long  chain  of  pleasure.  The  first  is 
a  narrow  slip  of  ancient  paper  cut  from  the 
72 


The   Old   Rosewood   Desk 

journal  of  Auntie  Francis,  Grandmother  Ward's 
sister,  who  brought  up  her  motherless  children. 

"Julia  began  music  with  Mr.  Boocock  Tuesday, 
October  30th,  1831." 

So  this  was  the  beginning  of  all  that  joy  in 
music!  No,  for  in  1831  she  was  twelve  years  old 
and  by  that  time  she  was  well  advanced  in  music. 
Her  first  master  was  an  irritable  Frenchman,  of 
whom  she  stood  in  such  awe  that  she  could  remem- 
ber little  that  he  taught.  Her  musical  educa- 
tion really  began  with  Mr.  Boocock,  always  grate- 
fully remembered  for  having  taught  her  to 
appreciate  the  works  of  Beethoven,  Handel  and 
Mozart.  From  the  first  she  worked  hard  at  her 
music  and  remained  a  good  musician  all  her  life. 
The  "children's  hour"  always  found  her  at  the 
piano,  singing  for  us  the  merry  student  songs  her 
brother  Sam  brought  home  with  him  from  the 
University  of  Heidelberg.  As  the  children  grew 
up  and  wandered  abroad  in  search  of  new  experi- 
ences, she  was  sometimes  left  alone  in  the  precious 
twilight  hour.  How  often  I  have  come  home  at 
dusk  to  hear  her  dear  voice  ringing  out  true  and 
clear  in  the  cadences  of  the  florid  Italian  operas 
of  her  youth,  or  throbbing  with  the  romantic 
passionate  melancholy  of  her  own  songs.  Certain 
of  these  I  could  never  hear  without  tears;  one 
filled  me  with  a  strange,  unbridled  terror,  a  sonnet 
of  Shakespeare's  set  to  music  of  her  own  composi- 
tion. 

73 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

"Not  a  flower,  not  a  flower  sweet, 

On  my  black  coffin  let  there  be  strewn; 
Not  a  friend,  not  a  friend  greet 

My  poor  corpse,  where  my  bones  shall  be  thrown. 

"A  thousand  thousand  sighs  to  save, 
Lay  me,  O,  where 
Sad  true  love  ne'er  find  my  grave. 
To  weep  there." 

On  her  catching  sight  of  the  terrified  child,  the 
melancholy  song  came  to  an  end,  the  quick  glanc- 
ing hands  struck  the  rollicking  notes  of  Lanni- 
gan's  Ball  that  set  the  little  girl  dancing  and  chased 
away  the  dread  shadow  of  mortality. 

The  document  found  with  the  extract  from 
Auntie  Francis'  journal  is  a  member's  ticket  for 
the  Handel  and  Haydn  Society.  One  of  the 
greatest  pleasures  of  my  mother's  middle  life  was 
singing  in  the  chorus  of  the  Handel  and  Haydn. 
I  remember  her  joy  when  my  brother  Henry 
Marion  was  old  enough  to  join  the  society.  The 
rehearsals  were  held  on  Sunday  evening  at  half 
past  seven;  there  used  to  be  a  great  scramble  to 
have  supper  early  and  get  our  two  choristers  off 
in  time  to  their  rehearsals  at  Bumstead  Hall. 
They  studied,  under  that  splendid  leonine  old 
leader,  Carl  Zerrahn,  the  great  choruses  of  the 
Messiah,  Elijah,  the  Creation,  Israel  in  Egypt, 
Judas  Maccabaeus  and  Bach's  Passion  Music. 
My  brother,  who  had  a  fine  baritone  voice,  used 
to  sing  some  of  the  arias  to  our  mother's  accom- 
paniment. I  can  hear  now  the  stirring  notes  of 
the  great  passage,  "His  voice  is  like  a  hammer 
74 


The  Old  Rosewood  Desk 

that  breaketh  the  rock,"  ring  through  the  house, 
see  her  sitting  at  the  old  Chickering  grand,  her 
son  standing  at  her  side ! 

Mr.  John  Sullivan  Dwight  was  one  of  the 
familiars  at  our  house.  My  mother  deeply  sym- 
pathized with  all  his  endless  labor  for  the  cause 
of  good  music  in  Boston.  He  was  the  chief  moving 
force  in  the  old  Harvard  Musical  Concerts,  fore- 
runners of  the  grander  but  not  more  enjoyable 
Symphony  Concerts  of  today.  They  were  given 
in  the  Boston  Music  Hall  on  Thursday  afternoons. 
We  had  our  seats  with  Mr.  Dwight  in  the  front 
row  of  the  lower  balcony,  where  it  was  thought 
the  music  was  heard  best.  The  placing  of  the 
great  or,gan  in  the  Music  Hall  was  a  momentous 
event.  I  remember  going  to  a  concert  while  the 
work  of  putting  up  the  organ  was  still  incomplete, 
and  the  tremendous  impression  made  by  the 
colossi,  the  great  brown  carved  wood  caryatids 
that  held  up  the  facade  of  the  organ,  and  the  faces 
of  the  muses  painted  on  the  golden  pipes.  The 
other  day  at  the  ruined  temple  of  Herakles,  in 
Sicily,  I  was  reminded  of  these  wooden  giants  by 
the  twin  giants  of  stone  that  lie  in  fallen  state  upon 
the  ground.  The  German  wood-carver  had  seen 
Magna  Grecia,  drawn  his  inspiration  from  the 
unfailing  source  of  Greek  art. 

One  more  treasure,  kept  these  many  years  in 
the  old  writing  desk!  An  ivory  tessera  with  the 
head  of  Sophocles  and  the  date  of  the  performance 
of  Antigone  by  the  Saturday  Morning  Club.  Well 
I  remember  her  pleasure,  her  pride  in  the  unique 
75 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

and  beautiful  production !  The  maidens  who  took 
the  younger  parts  are  matrons  now,  the  young 
matrons  are  grandmothers;  but  to  her  they  always 
remained  her  "Sat.  Morn.  Club"  girls,  the  loving 
and  loyal  members  of  the  Girls'  Club  she  founded 
thirty-five  years  ago. 

"  What  sense  shall  never  know, 
Soul  shall  remember; 
Roses  beneath  the  snow, 
June  in  November." 


76 


ADVERTISING  IN  BOSTON,  1847-1914 

By  Robert  Lincoln  O'Brien, 
Editor  of  the  Boston  Herald 

If  one  were  to  pick  up  a  newspaper  of  64  years 
ago,  the  first  thing  with  which  one  would  be 
impressed  would  be  the  great  preponderance  of 
advertising  over  news  matter.  The  Boston  Her- 
ald, the  Boston  Bee,  the  Boston  Transcript  and 
the  Boston  Courier  were  all  four-page  newspapers 
in  1847.  They  were,  contrary  to  the  prevalent 
impression  today,  composed  of  about  three- 
fourths  advertising.  Indeed,  the  newspaper  then 
carried  little  else.  A  three-month  old  story  of  a 
Mexican  War  battle,  a  verbatim  account  of  one 
of  Charles  Sumner's  speeches,  and  some  items  of 
local  interest,  perhaps  four  or  five  columns  in 
all,  comprised  the  day's  news.  The  second  page 
of  the  paper  was  the  news  page;  all  of  the  first 
and  last  pages,  and  usually  most  of  the  third, 
were  solid  masses  of  small  advertisements.  The 
second  and  third  pages  were  considered  the  most 
desirable,  commanding  double  the  price  of  the 
outside  pages. 

The  better  class  of  shops  followed  highly  dig- 
nified and  apparently  well-defined  forms.  The 
Bee  in  1847,  for  example,  carried  this  advertise- 
ment: "Persons  desirous  of  purchasing  any 
goods  at  Auction  Prices  may  do  so  by  calling  at 
77 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

123  Court  St.,  near  Bowdoin  Sq."  This  adver- 
tisement is  typical  in  its  bareness.  The  adver- 
tisers occupying  the  most  space  in  those  days, 
and  in  truth  for  nearly  a  half  century  afterwards, 
were  the  manufacturers  of  patent  medicines. 
Their  stamping-ground  was  usually  on  the  first 
page,  so  that  the  first  thing  which  greeted  the 
reader's  eye,  on  glancing  at  his  newspaper,  were 
long  eulogies  on  the  remarkable  qualities  of 
"Schenck's  Pulmonic  Syrup,"  "Buchan's  Hun- 
garian Balsam  of  Life,"  "Dr.  Warren's  Sarsa- 
parilla,  Tomato  and  Wild  Cherry,"  and  hordes 
of  others  of  a  similar  nature. 

Much  advertising  was  inserted  into  the  news 
columns  in  such  form  that  the  reader  could  not 
recognize  it  as  such  until  he  had  read  well  into  it. 
The  Boston  Courier,  in  1847,  besides  an  account 
of  General  Scott's  advance  on  Vera  Cruz,  and  in 
precisely  the  same  kind  of  type,  under  the  head- 
ing "Gourand's  Lectures  on  Chemistry,"  set 
forth  this  information:  "Another  wonderful  effect 
of  chemical  combination  may  thus  be  illustrated. 
Mix  in  a  glass  equal  quantities  of  a  saturated 
solution  of  Carbonate  of  Potash  and  a  saturated 
solution  of  Muriate  of  Lime.  Stir  the  mixture 
and  it  will  instantly  become  a  solid.  When 
chemistry  can  produce  such  wonders,  it  is  not  at 
all  surprising  that  Gourand's  Italian  Medicated 
Soap  should  be  invested  with  the  power  of  remov- 
ing Pimples,  Tan,  Freckles,  etc." 

This  attempt  of  advertisers  to  confuse  the 
reader  was  aided  by  playing  with  the  headings. 
78 


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Advertising   in   1847-1914 

When  some  event  was  given  special  prominence 
in  the  news,  the  advertisers  used  the  same  heading. 
For  example,  on  January  2,  1863,  the  Boston 
Herald  printed  Lincoln's  Emancipation  Pro- 
clamation under  the  word,  in  large  type,  "Pro- 
clamation." On  the  same  and  the  adjacent  page, 
a  dozen  advertisements  appeared  under  "Pro- 
clamation" set  up  in  precisely  the  same  way. 

The  lack  of  classification  of  the  newspaper  j, 
advertisements  in  1847  presents  the  amusing 
side  of  the  subject.  All  the  Boston  dailies  at 
that  period  had  columns  with  headings  "To  Let," 
"Auctions,"  and  "Board  and  Rooms."  But 
regardless  of  fitness,  the  majority  were  lumped 
together,  apparently  in  the  order  in  which  they 
had  been  received.  On  opening  at  random  the 
files  of  an  1847  newspaper  the  following  adver- 
tisements appear  printed  in  order  in  the  same 
column: — "To  let  in  Temple  St.  a  three  story 
brick  house";  "Bear's  Oil  at  12|  cents  a  bottle"; 
"S.  L.  Bedel  would  inform  her  friends  that  she 
will  this  day  open  at  154  Washington  St.  an 
elegant  assortment  of  Ornaments  for  the  head, 
beautiful  Marabout  Feathers,  delicate  Willows, 
and  pretty  Wreaths  of  Fruit  and  Flowers." 
This  carelessness  of  classification  was  noticeable, 
although  to  a  constantly  less  extent,  for  many 
years  after  1847.  In  the  Herald  in  1863  a  pro- 
bate notice  appears  between  a  "Poultry  Raffle  at 
18  Camden  St.,"  and  a  sale  of  "Harness  Leather." 

The    changes  in  the  character  of  the  adver- 
tising in  the  years  subsequent  to  1847  were  few. 
79 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

Newspapers  at  the  end  of  the  Civil  War  had 
approximately  the  same  appearance  as  twenty 
years  before.     The  only  noteworthy  change  in 
this  period  was  that  the  "wants  ads"  had  become 
very   well   classified.    About    1870   the   leading 
news  of  the  day  began  to  be  printed  on  the  first 
page,  and  the  more  objectionable  of  the  adver- 
tisements relegated  to  less  conspicuous  quarters. 
t      By  the  middle  seventies,  the  character  of  the 
]  advertising    begins    to    change    rapidly.     Firm 
names  which  are  now  recognized  as  standard, 
s  such  as  R.  H.  Stearns  &  Co.,  Jordan  Marsh  & 
Co.,  and  Shepard,  Norwell  &  Co.,  begin  to  appear. 
Stores  of  this  class  were  beginning  to  advertise 
on  an  increasingly  large  scale.     Often  they  would 
use  a  half,  or  even  a  whole  column,  a  small  adver- 
tisement from  1914  standards,  but  a  great  increase 
over  the  six  lines  of  three  decades  before.     Coin- 
cident with  this  improvement  in  the  quality  of 
advertising  in  the  Boston  newspapers  came  a 
very   marked   diminution  in  the  proportion   of 
■  advertising  to  news  matter.     This  tendency  was 
|  due  to  the  increase  in  the  size  of  the  newspapers, 
j.     About  1890,  for  the  first  time,  advertisements 
'began  to  occupy  over  a  single  column  in  width. 
The   greatest  advertisers  were   still  the  patent 
medicine  manufacturers.     Manufacturers  of  es- 
tablished lines  of  merchandise  began  to  advertise 
extensively.     It  was  not  until  well  after  1890, 
however,  that  the  big  stores  of  Boston  began  to 
recognize  the  advantage  of  continual  advertising. 
Once  the  movement  was  started,  dry  goods  adver- 
80 


Advertising   in    1847-1914 

tisements  grew  rapidly,  both  in  frequency  and 
size.  In  1894  one  of  the  Boston  stores  published  in 
the  Herald  an  advertisement  a  whole  page  wide 
and  a  half  page  deep  for  a  week  at  a  time.  By 
the  end  of  the  century  the  department  stores  had 
grown  to  be  the  largest  class  of  advertisers. 

The  greatest  change  of  all  in  advertising,  how- 
ever, came  with  the  turn  of  the  century.  Whole 
page  advertisements  appeared  with  frequency. 
Great  improvement  in  illustrating  methods  made 
it  possible  to  insert  half-tone  cuts  in  advertise- 
ments. Huge  financial  announcements  came,  in 
step  with  the  consolidations  of  the  first  years  of 
the  new  century.  Industrial  expansion  was 
accompanied  by  advertising  expansion.  As  stores 
doubled  their  size,  they  doubled  their  advertise- 
ments. And  for  all,  advertising  has  proved,  more 
truly  than  it  ever  was  of  speculation  or  com- 
petition, "the  life  of  trade." 


81 


BOSTON  AS  A  SHOPPING  CITY 

By  Heloise  E.  Hehset 

Cjxjlizfid  wnTnfl.n_^ops  as  naturally  as  she 
breathes.  The  Indian  squaw  grasps  without 
discrimination  whatever  she  can  get,  and  delights 
in  beads  or  blankets,  hats  or  shoes  with  a  complete 
disregard  of  the  adaptability  of  each  to  her  need. 
The  first  symptom  of  advance  in  the  scale  of  living 
may  be  seen  when  she  begins  to  choose  and  select, 
— to  weigh  advantage  against  price,  to  compare 
color  and  fabric,  and  to  match  both  to  her  com- 
plexion and  figure.  The  clerk  on  one  side  of  the 
counter  and  the  customer  on  the  other  write  the 
history  of  society  in  the  nations,  whether  the  sale 
takes  place  in  an  Eastern  bazaar  with  its  dark- 
skinned  merchant,  its  heavy  perfumes,  its  long- 
drawn-out  bargaining,  and  its  final  transfer  of  rich 
silk  or  precious  stone,  or  whether  it  is  made  in  the 
well-ordered,  brilliantly  lighted,  highly  organized 
American  store,  with  its  army  of  clerks  trained 
to  forestall  the  customer's  desire,  its  mechanical 
devices  to  save  the  customer's  time  and  strength, 
and  its  beguiling  display  to  develop  and  to  tempt 
the  customer's  taste. 

The  truth  is  that  shopping  is  the  vast  barometer 

of  social  evolution.     How  far  has  the  community 

climbed  on  the  mountain  path  of  progress  ?    How 

many   stages  since  barbarism  was  left  behind? 

83 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

How  long  before  the  nation  shall  instinctively 
choose  the  best, — sunshine  and  oxygen  as  against 
gloom  and  bad  air, — durable  and  tasteful  fabrics 
as  against  showy,  shoddy  ones?  The  market  and 
the  shop  have  the  answers  to  these  questions. 

The  methods  of  shopping  mark  the  passage  of 
the  years  in  the  history  of  a  town  as  sharply  as 
the  rings  on-  an  oak  tree  mark  its  age.  Each 
community  develops  its  peculiar  type  of  buying 
and  selling  for  the  needs  of  the  individual  and  the 
family.  In  Constantinople  the  merchant  carries 
his  silks  and  velvets  to  the  private  apartments  of 
his  rich  customer.  In  Paris,  every  lure  to  eye 
and  touch  is  brought  to  bear  to  induce  the  cus- 
tomer to  cross  the  threshold  of  the  fascinating 
shop.  One  may  travel  over  the  face  of  the  earth 
and  observe  in  close  detail  the  methods  by  which 
the  seller  of  various  cities  makes  traffic  with  the 
buyer,  and  works  out  the  genius  of  his  town  and 
his  time  in  his  business  and  to  his  profit.  If  the 
shopman  is  a  true  Bostonian,  for  example,  nine 
chances  out  of  ten  he  knows  his  Robert  Browning, 
or  at  least  his  wife  is  a  member  of  the  Browning 
Society;  so  quoting  to  himself  Browning's  immor- 
tal line,  "Life's  business  being  just  the  terrible 
choice,"  he  sets  about  making  that  choice  easy 
rather  than  difficult, — happy  rather  than  tire- 
some. Boston  will  do  it  in  its  own  way, — as 
different  from  the  ways  of  other  cities  as  her 
winding  streets  and  her  innocent  Frog  Pond  are 
different  from  Philadelphia's  prim  parallels  or 
London's  tragic  Serpentine. 

84 


Boston   as   a   Shopping   City 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  woman  who  buys, 
modern  cities  are  divided  into  two  great  classes. 
Paris  and  New  York  are  types  of  one  class; 
London  and  Vienna  and  Moscow  and  Boston  are 
types  of  the  other.  The  Paris  shop  is  made  like 
the  spider's  web, — to  catch  the  unwary  fly  of  any 
race  or  color  or  plumpness.  The  window  in  the 
Rue  de  la  Paix  is  dressed  to  attract  the  American 
or  English  woman,  or  the  Parisian  or  Russian; 
and  the  trim  demoiselle  who  serves  the  customer 
has  an  impersonal  mastery  of  her  business  which 
impresses  all  alike,  even  if  it  is  a  bit  chilling  in  its 
perfection.  Not  even  your  inability  to  speak 
her  language  melts  her  heart.  She  can  sell  you 
gloves  and  necklaces, — veritable  imitation  you 
may  be  sure,  with  a  fine  detachment,  whether 
you  are  from  Kansas  or  from  Devonshire  or  from 
"the  Provinces."  So  in  New  York— the  Fifth 
Avenue  clerk  or  the  Seventh  Avenue  clerk  is 
sublimely  indifferent  to  your  local  habitation  and 
your  name.  You  may  go  to  a  famous  confec- 
tioner ten  times  a  year  for  five  and  twenty  years, 
and  the  slender,  black-robed  woman  who  fills  your 
modest  order  will  write  your  address  without  a 
glimmer  of  a  hint  that  she  has  ever  heard  it  before. 
Whatever  you  are  to  her,  you  are  not  Yourself! 
Perhaps  she  condescends  to  recognize  the  Choicest 
of  Her  Choice, — but  you  need  not  aspire  to  join 
that  charmed  circle. 

So  much  for  New  York  and  Paris.  Boston  and 
London  are  otherwise.  The  shopper  in  those 
cities  expects  and  finds  a  personal  recognition  and 

85 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

a  friendly  interest  which  would  wander  about  in 
Paris  like  a  cat  in  a  strange  garret.  The  advan- 
tages of  a  huge,  impersonal  city  are  many;  but 
the  wise  woman  will  not  despise  the  delights  of  a 
small  community, — half  village,  half  city, — where 
name  and  taste  and  purse  of  everybody  are  known 
to  everybody  else.  In  fact,  when  these  more 
intimate  relations  are  once  established  and 
enjoyed,  they  are  prized  as  one  prizes  the  con- 
veniences of  home.  It  would  be  easy  to  enumer- 
ate a  score  of  these  personal  satisfactions  which 
come  pleasantly  to  the  surface  of  Boston  shopping. 
For  example,  it  is  said  that  a  certain  man  in  a 
certain  Boston  shop  knows  the  size  of  stocking 
worn  by  twice  four  hundred  Boston  women,  any 
one  of  whom  would  feel  it  a  definite  personal  slight 
for  him  to  ask  her  the  number  of  her  hose  or  her 
address.  A  certain  Boston  florist  hurries  home 
from  a  short  vacation  on  hearing  of  the  death  of  a 
prominent  man,  "because  it  would  be  more  trying 
for  the  family  to  order  from  a  clerk  the  flowers  for 
the  funeral!"  Not  a  woman  experienced  in 
Boston  shopping  but  remembers  with  admiration 
the  famous  "Amanda," — whose  strong  face  and 
gaunt  figure  were  "features"  of  the  store  of  R.  H. 
Stearns  for  a  generation.  She  knew  the  pattern 
of  ginghams  and  muslins  that  had  graced  the 
South  Shore  and  the  North  Shore  for  forty  years. 
Her  memory  of  marriages  and  intermarriages  and 
cousinships  and  even  of  family  disagreements  made 
her  a  perfect  "Social  Register"  for  the  newcomer 
to  Boston's  inner  circle. 
86 


Boston   as   a   Shopping   City 

One  might  easily  make  a  collection  of  illustra- 
tions of  the  way  in  which  customer  and  clerk  in 
Boston  take  the  personal  relation  as  a  matter  of 
course,  as  much  to  be  counted  on  as  a  business 
guaranty  of  goods  or  a  prompt  payment  of  bills. 
A  customer  at  the  small  wares  counter  at  one 
of  the  large  stores  heard  one  morning  as  she  was 
selecting  her  needles  and  pins  a  queer  noise  beneath 
the  counter.  "What  is  that?"  she  asked;  "it 
sounds  like  a  small  and  lonesome  kitten!"  "It  is 
a  kitten,"  replied  the  clerk; "  Miss  Johnson  brought 
it  in  an  hour  ago  and  asked  me  to  take  care  of  it 
for  her  until  afternoon.  It  cries  unless  I  hold  it 
all  the  time!"  So  she  nestled  the  tiny  cat  up  to 
her  neck,  as  if  the  care  of  it  was  a  perfectly  natural 
and  agreeable  part  of  the  day's  work! 

This  personal  relation  between  buyer  and  seller 
is  the  very  climax  of  the  art  of  shopping  as  prac- 
ticed by  the  dealers  of  London.  Huge  as  is  the 
business  of  the  city,  the  old  firms  have  never 
outgrown  their  early  habit  of  regarding  a  patron 
as  a  valuable,  personal  asset.  A  stray  American 
in  the  bookstore  of  Bernard  Quaritch, — famous 
among  the  booksellers  of  the  world, — was  amused 
and  amazed  to  hear  an  English  customer  suggest 
that  the  clerk  should  put  a  corner  of  Cheshire 
cheese  into  the  budget  of  books  which  were  to 
go  to  the  "shooting  box"  in  Scotland.  The  clerk 
seemed  to  regard  the  Cheshire  cheese  with  the 
same  friendly  attention  which  he  bestowed  on  the 
mixture  of  new  novels  and  constitutional  law 
which  his  customer  ordered. 
87 


Days    and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

Emphasis  on  the  personal  relation  between 
buyer  and  seller  is  nowhere  more  noticeable  than 
in  Boston,  and  nowhere  in  Boston  more  recognized 
by  everybody  concerned  than  at  the  sixty-seven- 
year-old  establishment  of  R.  H.  Stearns  and 
Company.  At  the  close  of  the  Christmas  holi- 
days of  1911  the  firm  issued  a  letter  of  cordial 
thanks  to  its  employees  for  their  hearty  co- 
operation in  the  effort  to  make  the  best  holiday 
business  of  their  history.  The  phrases  of  the 
letter  were  full  of  real  feeling,  and  one  saw  that 
customers  and  employees  and  partners  were  alike 
included  in  the  general  glow  of  satisfaction. 

Next  door  to  Stearns'  famous  corner  stands 
old  St.  Paul's  Church.  It  is  in  keeping  with  the 
traditions  of  the  parish  and  its  long  career  of 
helpfulness,  and  equally  in  keeping  with  the 
tradition  of  the  firm  for  good  neighborliness,  that 
the  church  should  recently  have  sent  a  letter  to 
every  person  employed  by  its  neighbor  offering 
its  help  to  each  and  every  one  of  them  in  any  way 
in  which  a  church  can  serve.  Intellectual  and 
spiritual  needs  are  recognized  by  both  great 
institutions  as  being  as  imperative  as  the  needs  of 
the  body.  Church  and  store  may  work  together. 
The  doctor  and  the  trained  nurse  make  their 
rounds  of  the  busy  aisles  of  the  shop,  and  priest 
and  organist  and  choir  boy  and  sexton  give  the 
welcome  of  religion  to  the  worker  who  has  also  the 
claim  of  the  Christian  neighbor.  By  such  means 
do  gracious  human  activities  grow  and  spread. 

From  one  point  of  view  modern  life  appears 
like  a  vast  machine,  the  wheels  of  which  are  made 
88 


Boston   as   a   Shopping   City 

of  helpless  human  beings.  Competition,  the 
division  of  labor,  the  complete  separation  of  the 
product  from  the  person  who  produces  it, — all 
these  great  economic  facts  which  have  come  to 
pass  since  our  grandmothers  shopped  seem  to 
have  conspired  to  take  out  of  buying  and  selling 
all  recognition  of  the  person  of  buyer  and  seller 
and  maker.  But  in  the  shop  and  in  society  there 
is  working  slowly  and  steadily  another  force, 
counteracting  the  tendency  to  make  men  and 
women  into  machines,  and  divorce  their  work 
from  their  welfare.  This  force  goes  by  many 
names.  One  day  it  is  called  Socialism,  another 
day  it  is  called  Human  Brotherhood,  another 
day  it  is  called  fantastically  an  "Uplift  Move- 
ment." The  names  are  only  masquerades  to 
conceal  a  shy  reluctance  on  the  part  of  men  and 
women  to  speak  the  old-fashioned  phrase  of 
Christian  Love.  There  are  many  evils  in  modern 
business  life,  and  in  modern  society  as  related  to 
business.  But  there  is  also  a  growing  passion  in 
the  hearts  of  good  folk  to  ameliorate  those  evils. 
There  must  be  great  factories  where  the  workers 
are  numbered  by  hundreds  and  are  classed  as 
"hands."  But  there  are  also  employers  to  whom 
every  pair  of  hands  represents  a  living,  toiling, 
hoping  person.  There  are  huge  shops  where  the 
long  procession  of  employees  and  customers  moves 
through  the  aisles  with  no  more  personal  recogni- 
tion than  as  if  they  were  so  many  mechanical 
toys;  whole  cities  where  the  struggle  for  the 
newest  kind  of  freedom  has  scarcely  begun.  In 
89 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

other  cities  it  is  well  advanced, — the  freedom  of 
the  community  where  modern  civilization  joins 
hands  with  brotherly  love,  and  makes  life  worth 
living  for  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men. 

Boston  has  never  been  so  greedy  of  gain  as  some 
cities.  She  has  never  been  so  much  in  a  hurry  as 
others.  Her  shops  have  grown  large  and  tempt- 
ing, but  they  have  never  lost  the  air  of  those  days 
when  everybody  in  the  town  knew  everybody 
else,  and  they  all  met  at  one  or  another  of  the 
historic  "corners"  in  a  sort  of  natural  friendliness. 
Clerks  and  customers  and  owners  and  errand  boys 
knew  each  other's  names,  and  respected  each 
other's  work,  and  regarded  each  other's  needs. 
Today  the  wisest  of  the  merchants  of  Boston  are 
taking  that  old  friendliness  and  cherishing  and 
invigorating  it  as  a  substantial  part  of  their 
business.  Recognition  on  both  sides  of  the 
counter  is  counted  as  an  asset  by  the  firm  and  a 
privilege  by  the  customer.  In  fact,  it  gives  to 
Boston  its  distinctive  character  as  a  shopping 
city.  "Do  you  know  the  name  of  every  clerk 
in  this  store?"  asked  a  New  York  woman  of  her 
Boston  hostess  in  the  midst  of  a  morning  of 
shopping.  "No,"  was  the  reply;  "but  I  wish  I 
did,  for  most  of  them  know  my  name  and  more- 
over they  know  what  I  like!"  Perhaps  this 
personal  touch  makes  the  stranger  within  our 
gates  a  little  more  strange  than  she  likes  to  be,  but 
to  the  Native  Born  it  makes  Boston  the  pleasant- 
est  shopping  city  in  the  world. 


90 


AN  HISTORIC  CORNER 

TREMONT  STREET  AND  TEMPLE  PLACE 

By  Walter  K.  Watkins 
Of  the  Bostonian  Society 

One  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne's  stories  of  old 
New  England  is  prefaced  by  a  chapter  which  in  | 
effect  describes  the  evolution  from  a  wilderness 
to  civilization:  first  the  silence  and  solitude  of 
the  forest;  then  the  Indian,  stealing  by,  bent  upon 
war  or  the  chase;  then  the  explorer,  the  hunter 
and  the  smoke  of  the  settler's  cabin  and  finally, 
after  a  couple  of  centuries  of  slow  development, 
orderly  towns  and  cities  and  dense  population. 

With  much  the  same  thought  one  may  con- 
template a  number  of  historic  localities  in  Boston, 
and  shutting  out  the  eager,  insistent  present — 
the  tall  buildings  and  hurrying  throngs,  the 
electric  cars,  automobiles  and  drays — step  back 
into  the  twilight  and  the  silence  of  the  past,  and 
picture  the  successive  steps  of  settlement. 

The  present  corner  of  Tremont  Street  and] 
Temple  Place  possesses  much  historic  interest. 
One  must  grope  backward  in  time  almost  three 
hundred  years  to  find  this  particular  acre  of 
ground  unoccupied  by  men,  and  for  most  of  that 
long  period  it  has  been  the  center  of  the  city's 
activities  and  growth.  By  the  middle  of  the 
17th  century  it  was  a  half  cleared  pasture,  and 
here  a  little  later  was  built  the  home  of  one  of  the 
91 


Days    and    Ways    in    Old    Boston 

first  born  in  the  colony.  From  this  house  we 
can  imagine  the  outlook  over  a  southward  strag- 
gling path,  rough  and  but  half  broken,  along  the 
Common,  a  mere  bit  of  partially  reclaimed  marsh 
set  aside  as  pasturage  for  the  cows  of  the  settle- 
ment while  over  all  broods  the  silence  of  the 
unbroken,  unexplored  continent.  Precarious  in 
the  extreme  was  the  foothold  of  white  settlements 
which  only  at  Manhattan  and  a  few  other  places 
broke  the  monotony  of  the  wild  shore  line  between 
Boston  and  Jamestown. 

Both  of  these  centers  of  European  civiliza- 
tion, however,  were  more  remote  and  shadowy  to 
each  other  than  Ispahan  or  Cape  Town  to  the 
Americans  of  the  twentieth  century. 

As  the  decades  passed,  the  house  at  Tremont 
Street  near  what  is  now  Temple  Place,  slowly 
became  a  venerable  mansion  about  which  clus- 
tered the  home  memories  of  birth  and  marriage 
and  death.  Owner  succeeded  owner,  and  unlike 
the  usual  American  community  in  which  all  the 
local  events,  like  incidents  in  a  moving  picture, 
are  jumbled  into  an  abnormally  short  space  of 
time,  the  period  of  the  colonial  home  at  Tre- 
mont Street  and  Temple  Place  was  long  and 
deliberate,  and  stretched  far  into  a  second  cen- 
tury. It  suggests  the  age  of  Boston  compared 
with  most  American  cities,  that  our  retrospect  from 
the  present  to  the  days  of  the  Revolution  covers 
a  shorter  period  than  that  other  and  earlier  period 
spanned  by  the  old  House  of  Usher,  from  the  date 
of  its  erection  in  1684  to  its  final  removal  in  1830. 
92 


An   Historic   Corner 

There  are,  indeed,  few  houses  in  the  United 
States  at  the  present  time  more  venerable  than 
was  the  Usher  mansion  when  finally  torn  down. 
In  the  following  pages  the  history  of  this  man- 
sion and  the  site  upon  which  it  stood  is  traced 
in  some  detail. 

In  the  Days  of  the  Settlement 
In  the  month  of  June,  1630,  Governor  Win- 
throp's  little  fleet  threaded  its  way  between  the 
green  wooded  islands  of  the  harbor  of  Boston  and 
passed  the  Mary  and  John  anchored  off  Nan- 
tasket.  The  newcomers  were  saluted  from  Sam- 
uel Maverick's  palisaded  house  at  Winnisimmet, 
and  the  Spragues  welcomed  them  to  the  shores 
of  the  Mystic.  On  the  south  slope  of  the  west 
hill  of  that  crown  of  peaks  which  gave  the  name 
of  Trimount  to  the  settlement,  dwelt  William 
Blackstone  in  a  thatched  house  flanked  by  a 
ruder  garden. 

After  a  score  of  years  let  us  ascend  the  Beacon 
Hill,  the  center  of  the  crown,  and  view  the  growth 
of  the  town  of  Boston. 

Houses  fringe  the  water  front  from  Merry's 
Point  at  the  North  End  to  Fort  Point  at  Fort 
Hill.  They  are  thickly  clustered  about  the 
Town  Cove,  which  indented  the  shore  to  the 
present  Adams  Square.  On  the  High  Street  to 
the  water  (now  State  Street)  were  the  homes  of 
the  town  fathers  and  on  the  High  or  Fore  Street 
to  Roxbury,  now  Washington  Street,  were  the 
houses  of  prosperous  tradesmen,  their  shops  on 
93       ' 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

the  ground  floor  and  their  dwellings  above,  as  is 
the  custom  still  in  Old  England.  These  houses 
on  the  highway  to  Roxbury  were  each  surrounded 
by  the  goodly  part  of  an  acre  of  garden  with 
orchards  in  the  rear.  On  the  west  side  of  this 
street,  south  of  Winter  Street,  these  orchards 
extended  back  to  a  fringe  of  pastures  which 
skirted  the  "Common  land"  on  the  east.  One 
of  these  pastures,  an  acre  and  a  half,  was  between 
the  site  of  St.  Paul's  Church  and  West  Street. 
In  it  grazed  the  cattle  of  Henry  Webb,  a  prosperous 
merchant,  who  dwelt  opposite  the  Market  Place, 
now  the  Old  State  House  site.  In  poor  grazing 
seasons  a  pasture  which  he  owned  on  Fort  Hill  also 
gave  forage  to  his  cattle.  His  warehouse  faced  the 
Town  Dock  and  his  vessels  unloading  at  his  wharf 
lay  where  a  century  later  Faneuil  Hall  was  erected. 
Back  of  his  house,  which  stood  on  the  corner 
of  what  is  now  State  and  Devonshire  Streets, 
lived  William  Parsons,  a  carpenter  and  "sley- 
maker."  Parsons  was  destined  to  help  make 
history  as  one  of  the  "Fifth  Monarchy"  men 
who  ran  a  bloody  riot  in  London  Streets  in  1661, 
but  he  did  not  meet  the  fate  of  his  leader  that 
other  Boston  man,  Thomas  Venner,  who  was 
hung,  drawn  and  quartered,  for  Parsons  slipped 
away  in  the  crowd  and  fled  back  to  New  England. 
There,  when  well  advanced  in  years,  and  known 
as  "Old  Will  Parsons, "  he  sold  drinks  in  front  of 
his  house.  It  was  to  him  that  Webb  sold  his 
pasture  but  by  1646  Parsons  had  disposed  of  the 
land  to  Richard  Carter,  also  a  carpenter. 
94 


An    Historic    Corner 


Carter  lived  not  far  away  on  the  High  Street 
to  Roxbury,  south  of  West  Street,  and  on  the 
site  of  what  became  later  the  "Lamb  Tavern" 
and  is  now  covered  by  the  Adams  House.  His 
wife  was  evidently  an  advanced  woman,  or  suffra- 
gette of  the  period,  as  she  was  admonished  twice 
for  seditious  words.  She  survived  her  husband 
and  married  John  Hunt  of  Charlestown.  A 
daughter,  Mary,  for  a  second  husband  espoused 
a  neighbor,  Joseph  Cowell,  who  lived  on  the  south 
corner  of  West  and  Washington  Streets.  From 
his  residence  there  West  Street  was  early  known 
as  Cowell's  Lane,  and  down  the  lane  to  the  pas- 
ture he  led  the  horses  that  he  rode  as  messenger 
for  the  Colony  to  Hartford  and  New  York. 

In  1680  Mrs.  Hunt  and  her  daughter  Mrs. 
Cowell,  sold  the  pasture  to  Hezekiah  Usher 
Junior.  Hezekiah  Usher,  Senior,  was  the  first 
bookseller  of  the  colony.  He  lived  on  the  north 
side  of  the  Market  Place  and  his  warehouse  in 
the  rear  faced  the  Town  Dock.  He  died  in  1676, 
leaving  a  goodly  fortune  and  two  sons  to  quarrel 
over  it  and  evoke  the  aid  of  the  law.  Six  months 
after  his  father's  death  Hezekiah  Usher  married 
Bridget,  the  widow  of  Dr.  Leonard  Hoar,  Presi- 
dent of  Harvard  College.  Mrs.  Usher's  parents 
were  Lord  John  Lisle,  who  was  assassinated  at 
Lausanne,  Switzerland,  in  1664,  and  Lady  Alicia 
Lisle,  beheaded  at  Winchester,  England,  in  1685. 
After  a  few  years  of  married  life,  spent  in  tne  house 
he  erected  in  1684  in  Carter's  pasture,  Usher 
developed  such  eccentricities  that  in  1687  Mrs. 
95 


£ 


An   Historic   Corner 

Usher  and  her  daughter,  by  her  previous  mar- 
riage, left  Usher  and  sailed  for  England,  the 
husband  weeping  bitterly. 

Left  alone,  Usher  was  discontented  and  unhappy. 
In  May,  1688,  he  leased  his  house  to  John  West, 
secretary  to  Andros,  the  new  governor  of  the 
colony.  West  had  come  to  New  York  in  1678, 
became  the  town  clerk  and  married  the  daughter 
of  Thomas  Rudyard,  lieutenant  governor  of  New 
Jersey.  It  was  shortly  after  the  arrival  of  West 
in  Boston,  in  June,  1688,  at  the  Usher  house, 
that  Andros  had  his  stormy  interview  with  Judge 
Sewall  in  regard  to  occupying  the  Old  South 
Meeting  House  as  a  place  of  worship.  Soon 
afterward  Andros  was  confined  in  the  Fort  and 
West  in  the  common  prison,  until  they  were  sent 
back  to  England  in  February,  1689.  Two  years 
later,  in  1691,  West  died  in  his  lodgings  in  St. 
Martins,  Ludgate  parish,  London.  In  a  few 
years  his  widow  again  married,  having  obtained 
for  West's  services  grants  of  lands  at  Barnegat 
and  elsewhere  in  New  Jersey.  For  a  third  hus- 
band she  married  Andrew  Hamilton,  speaker  of 
the  Pennsylvania  Assembly.  Her  daughter  mar- 
ried Chief  Justice  Allen  and  her  grand-daughter 
was  the  wife  of  the  son  of  Richard  Perm,  last 
proprietary  governor  of  Pennsylvania. 

When  West  vacated  the  Usher  house  it  was 
rented  to  Waitstill  Winthrop,  grandson  of  the  first 
governor.  Winthrop  was  a  prominent  citizen 
of  Boston,  a  judge,  councilor,  and  of  high  rank 
in  the  militia.     In  1692  his  house  was  brilliant 

7  97 


Waitstill  Winthbop 


An   Historic   Corner 

with  illumination  when  the  province  govern- 
ment began  under  the  new  charter  In  Septem- 
ber of  the  same  year,  it  was  the  scene  of  stately 
festivities  when  his  daughter,  Anne,  was  married 
to  Major  John  Richards.  Here  also  Winthrop 
conferred  with  his  townsmen  in  regard  to  that 
epidemic  of  witchcraft  which  convulsed  New 
England  in  1692.  The  owner  of  the  house,  Heze- 
kiah  Usher,  with  his  many  eccentricities,  did  not 
escape  suspicion,  and  was  accused  by  Susanna 
Sheldon  of  Salem.  She  declared  that  he  stuck 
pins  into  her,  but  his  brother  and  Winthrop  pre- 
vented prosecution. 

In  the  winter  of  1696-7  while  Usher  was  on  a 
journey,  he  fell  from  his  horse  in  the  town  of 
Maiden  and  was  taken  to  the  tavern  of  Isaac 
Hill  in  an  injured  condition,  where  he  became 
worse,  mentally  and  physically.  His  brother  was 
made  his  guardian  and  in  April,  1697,  he  was 
removed  to  Lynn,  where  he  died  in  July.  Usher's 
body  was  brought  to  Boston  and  placed  in  his 
father's  tomb  in  the  King's  Chapel  Burial  Ground. 
Passers-by  can  readily  read  the  inscription  on  the 
tomb  located  next  the  "old  Registry  Building." 
His  will  clearly  shows  his  disordered  mind  and 
in  it  he  bitterly  denounces  his  wife. 

Mrs.  Usher  had  attempted  to  obtain  the  family 
home  before  her  husband's  death,  upon  the 
authority  of  a  deed  of  gift  given  at  the  time  of 
marriage.  An  effort  to  eject  Winthrop  the 
tenant  was  unsuccessful,  but  upon  Usher's  death 
Mr.  Winthrop  moved;  but  suits  were  brought 
99 


An   Historic   Corner 

by  Judge  Sewall  as  Mrs.  Usher's  attorney  against 
the  executor  and  tenant  for  possession.  Mrs. 
Usher  was  successful  in  the  lower  and  higher  courts 
and  the  case  was  appealed  by  Usher's  executor 
to  the  Privy  Council  in  England.  Their  confir- 
mation of  Mrs.  Usher's  right  was  received  in  1700 
and  she  came  into  possession  of  the  house.  Judge 
Sewall  presented  to  his  client  a  cord  of  wood  from 
Muddy  River  (as  Brookline  was  then  called),  to 
start  housekeeping.  Mrs.  Usher  held  possession  of 
the  house  till  1714.     Her  death  occurred  in  1725. 

In  the  Days  of  the  Province 

In  1714  Mrs.  Usher  sold  the  mansion  to  Francis 
Wainwright  of  Ipswich.  His  father,  Colonel 
John,  left  him  considerable  wealth.  He  also 
inherited  through  his  mother,  a  niece  of  Rev. 
John  Norton,  lands  in  Ipswich  granted  that  min- 
ister. Coming  to  Boston,  Wainwright  married  a 
daughter  of  Governor  Joseph  Dudley.  His  busi- 
ness ventures,  however,  were  unsuccessful,  and 
he  mortgaged  the  Usher  house  together  with 
other  properties.  The  mortgage  upon  the  former 
was  not  paid;  he  was  sued  in  1720  for  possession, 
and  transferred  the  Usher  house  to  Deacon 
Jonathan  Williams,  a  wine  cooper. 

Wainwright  was  never  prominent  in  town  affairs 
in  Boston.  He  did  hold  the  office  of  constable,  but 
his  only  official  act,  if  it  could  be  so  termed, 
was  a  failure  to  warn  a  town  meeting  in  1713, 
and  for  this  he  was  censured  with  his  fellow  con- 
stables, equally  guilty.  He  died  in  1722  and  his 
101 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

widow  married  again,  as  was  the  custom  in  those 
days. 

The  new  proprietor  of  the  Usher  house,  Deacon 
Williams,  had  married,  as  his  second  wife,  Re- 
becca, the  widow  of  James  Townsend,  wine  mer- 
chant. With  her  he  took  her  worldly  goods, 
which  were  on  sale  in  the  wine  shop  of  her  late 
husband  on  Cornhill  (now  Washington  Street) 
and  known  as  the  sign  of  "The  Black  Boy  and 
Butt." 

Williams'  residence  was  in  Savage's  Court  off 
Cornhill,  which  later  took  the  name  of  Williams 
Court.  This  name  it  still  retains  with  its  alias 
of  Pie  Alley.  Williams  also  owned  a  block  of 
three  houses  on  Portland  Street,  then  Cold  Lane. 

The  mansion  house  of  Usher  now  secured  a 
tenant  of  more  note  in  the  person  of  Rev.  Roger 
Price  of  King's  Chapel.  Of  an  ancient  Welsh 
family  which  had  settled  in  Buckinghamshire,  he 
was  educated  for  the  church.  After  his  course 
at  Oxford  he  went  as  a  chaplain  on  the  coast  of 
Guinea.  There  he  was  captured  by  pirates,  and 
on  his  release  went  to  St.  Anne's,  Jamaica,  as 
chaplain.  Both  experiences  contributed  to  ill 
health  and  he  returned  to  England.  His  health 
not  improving,  he  accepted  a  position  in  Boston, 
arriving  in  1729.  He  first  lodged  with  Peter 
Feust  or  Feuart,  a  Dutchman,  on  Marlboro  now 
Washington  Street.  His  relations  with  Rev. 
Henry  Harris  and  Rev.  Thomas  Harward,  suc- 
cessively the  rectors  of  King's  Chapel,  were  not 
the  most  pleasant.  At  last,  in  1733,  he  decided 
102 


Bridal  Gown  worn  by   Miss  Elizabeth  Bull  as  the  Bride  of  Rev.  Roger  Price,  the 

Rector  of  King's  Chapel,  who  Came  in   1735   to   Live  in  the   Usher  House 

at  the  Corner  of  what  is  now  Tremont  Street  and  Temple  Place. 


An   Historic   Corner 

to  return  to  England  and  even  engaged  passage. 
Contrary  winds,  however,  delayed  departure, 
and  while  waiting  to  sail  he  attended  Trinity 
Church  and  saw  Miss  Elizabeth  Bull.  All  thoughts 
of  departure  were  driven  from  his  mind;  he  secured 
presentation  to  the  young  lady  and  assiduously 
paid  her  court.  Miss  Bull  was  regarded  as  one 
of  the  beauties  of  that  period.  She  was  the  grand- 
child of  old  Sergeant  Bull,  who  kept  the  "Bull 
Tavern"  by  the  waterside  at  the  foot  of  Summer 
Street,  the  "Seven  Star  Lane"  of  those  days. 
After  a  lengthy  courtship  they  were  married  in 
1735  and  went  to  reside  in  the  Usher  house.  We 
can  imagine  the  dainty  bride  clothed  in  the  finely 
embroidered  wedding  gown,  which  with  the  linen 
of  her  young  children  is  still  preserved  and  is  now 
in  the  Collections  of  the  Bostonian  Society. 

Meanwhile,  Deacon  Williams  was  gathered  to 
his  fathers,  and  once  more  the  spirit  of  litigation, 
seemingly  framed  into  the  very  timbers  of  the 
house  by  its  first  owner,  again  appeared.  Con- 
troversy over  the  partition  of  the  deacon's  estate 
brought  the  matter  before  the  Superior  Court  of 
Judicature  and  on  an  appeal  to  the  Governor  and 
Council,  the  property  was  sold  in  1742  to  Mr. 
Stephen  Greenleaf.  In  a  few  years  Mr.  Roger 
Price  and  family  removed  to  Hopkinton,  where  he 
established  a  church  and  Mr.  Greenleaf  became 
the  occupant  of  the  mansion  as  well  as  its  owner. 


103 


Sheriff  Stephen  Greenleaf 


An   Historic   Corner 

The  Revolutionary  Period 

Stephen  Greenleaf  was  born  in  Newbury  in 
1704.  Inheriting  wealth,  he  married  in  1731  and 
came  to  reside  in  Boston.  In  1757  he  was  ap- 
pointed sheriff  of  Suffolk  County.  In  August  fol- 
lowing Greenleaf 's  appointment,  Thomas  Pownall 
arrived  as  governor  of  the  province  and  in  the  next 
year  Thomas  Hutchinson  became  lieutenant-gov- 
ernor. In  September  (1758),  General  Lord  Am- 
herst arrived  in  Boston  and  his  troops  encamped 
on  the  Common  near  the  old  Usher  mansion  on 
their  way  to  Lake  George.  The  same  year  saw 
Pownall  depart  for  South  Carolina,  and  the  sheriff 
early  in  August  headed  a  detachment  of  the  gov- 
ernor's troop  of  guards  and  rode  to  Wrentham  to 
welcome  the  new  governor,  Francis  Bernard,  and 
act  as  his  escort  to  Boston. 

In  December,  1758,  Greenleaf,  from  the  bal- 
cony of  the  Town  House,  proclaimed  the  new 
King,  George  the  Third,  and  a  few  days  later 
assisted  in  the  funeral  ceremonies  for  the  late 
King. 

Soon  began  the  oppression  of  the  colony  through 
acts  of  the  crown  officers,  more  especially  those 
of  the  revenue  and  customs.  Because  of  his 
official  position  Greenleaf  became  an  actor  in  the 
scenes  and  incidents  resulting  from  the  opposi- 
tion of  Otis  and  his  friends  to  the  writs  of  assist- 
ance. Upon  an  August  day  in  1765  word  was 
brought  him  that  Bute  and  Oliver  (the  stamp 
officer)  were  hanging  in  effigy  from  the  Liberty 
105 


An   Historic   Corner 

Tree.  Hastening  to  the  scene  he  was  prevented 
from  removing  the  figures,  but  was  assured  they 
would  be  taken  down.  This  was  done  in  the 
evening  and  they  were  burnt  on  the  Common. 
Hutchinson  and  the  sheriff  hearing  reports  of 
Oliver's  treatment  by  the  mob,  wended  their  way 
to  the  latter's  house  in  Milk  Street,  but  were 
obliged  themselves  to  take  safety  in  flight.  These 
demonstrations,  caused  by  the  Stamp  Act,  were 
of  a  different  nature  when  repeated  in  May, 
1766,  upon  its  repeal.  Greenleaf,  from  the  win- 
dows of  his  house,  saw  the  erection  on  the  Com- 
mon of  a  pyramid,  illuminated  by  280  lamps. 
His  neighbor,  John  Hancock,  upon  the  other  side 
of  the  Common,  treated  his  fellow  townsmen  to 
Madeira  wine,  and  the  Sons  of  Liberty  set  off 
fireworks  in  front  of  the  work-house  on  what  is 
now  Park  Street  and  entertained  their  friends 
within  with  refreshments  of  a  liquid  nature. 

This,  however,  was  but  a  lull  in  the  storm. 
In  March,  1768,  the  sheriff  again  received  word 
that  the  Liberty  Tree  had  borne  fresh  fruit  and 
that  Paxton  and  Williams,  customs  officers,  were 
hanging  from  the  boughs.  Before  the  sheriff's 
arrival,  however,  the  effigies  were  removed. 

In  September,  1766,  Greenleaf  had  assisted  the 
customs  officers  in  their  attempt  to  search  the 
house  of  Daniel  Malcolm,  the  patriot,  on  Fleet 
Street,  but  they  were  prevented  in  their  purpose 
by  a  great  gathering  of  the  people.  In  June, 
1768,  the  customs  officers  again  met  with  opposi- 
tion for  seizure  of  the  sloop  Liberty.  This  vessel, 
107 


An   Historic   Corner 

which  had  lain  at  the  wharf  of  its  owner,  John 
Hancock,  for  a  month  and  had  been  used  to  store 
oil  and  tar,  was  seized,  as  its  contents  had  not 
been  entered  for  export.  The  crowd  after  han- 
dling the  officers  roughly  dragged  a  boat  of  the 
"Collector"  up  what  is  now  Washington  Street 
to  the  Liberty  Tree  opposite  Frog  Lane  (Boylston 
Street) .  It  was  then  taken  to  the  Common,  where 
Greenleaf  and  other  onlookers  watched  it  ascend 
in  smoke  and  flame.  News  of  the  affair  reached 
England.  Rumors  of  troops  to  be  sent  to  the 
town  from  the  mother  country  became  current. 
One  noon  the  sheriff,  casting  his  eye  across  the 
Common,  noticed  the  beacon  on  Beacon  Hill  was 
prepared  to  be  Ugh  ted.  Hastily  climbing  the 
slope  he  quietly  removed  the  signal  which  was 
to  announce  the  arrival  of  the  troops.  They  came 
in  September  and  with  bayonets  fixed  and  colors 
flying,  marched  to  the  Common.  Barracks  were 
needed  for  them  and  the  Manufactury  House, 
where  Hamilton  Place  now  extends,  was  selected. 
It  had  been  leased  to  Elisha  Brown,  a  weaver, 
and  he  objected  to  vacating.  The  law  was  evoked 
and  the  sheriff  and  Hutchinson  attempted  to  get 
possession.  A  weaver  leaving  through  a  cellar 
window  one  noon  was  pushed  aside  by  Greenleaf 
who  entered  and  soldiers  were  posted  in  the  cellar. 
Brown  held  the  fort  in  the  upper  stories,  and 
successfully,  for  the  soldiers  were  withdrawn  in  a 
few  weeks. 

It  was  in  1768  that  the  sheriff  was  told  by  Harri- 
son Gray,  the  province  treasurer,  as  he  handed 
109 


I;    ,    fj 


An   Historic   Corner 


him  an  execution  against  Samuel  Adams,  that 
he  knew  his  duty  and  if  he  failed  he  would  be 
accountable.  But  the  sheriff  as  well  as  his 
fellow  townsmen,  patriots  and  loyalists,  were 
lenient  in  serving  a  distress  warrant  on  Adams, 
in  his  unfortunate  position  as  tax  collector,  and 
amicably  settled  with  him  his  accounts. 

At  the  trial  of  the  soldiers  for  the  Boston  Mas- 
sacre, Greenleaf  performed  his  official  duties  as 
sheriff  as  he  had  done  previously  when  Robinson 
and  others  were  charged  with  the  assault  on  James 
Otis.  He  presented  himself  at  Faneuil  Hall  while 
the  reports  of  the  tea  importers  were  read  and 
ordered  the  town's  people  to  disperse.  These 
were  all  in  the  line  of  his  official  duties,  and  though 
after  the  evacuation  of  Boston,  in  April,  1776,  his 
arrest  was  ordered,  like  many  other  loyalists  and 
office-holders  under  the  crown,  he  was  left  in 
possession  of  his  property.  In  1765  he  had  been 
licensed  as  an  inn-holder  and  during  the  siege 
he  had  many  British  officers  billeted  in  his  house. 

One  morning  in  1795  Samuel  Adams,  then 
governor,  who  lived  just  back  of  Greenleaf  on 
Winter  Street,  was  told  that  the  "old  sheriff" 
was  dead.  He  had  died  at  the  ripe  age  of  ninety- 
one  and  many  recalled  the  austere  but  kindly 
man  who  had  displayed  considerable  tact  during 
the  stormy  days  before  the  Revolution. 

A  granddaughter  who  lived  with  him  in  his 

declining   years   married    Charles   Bulfinch,   the 

architect.     The  State  House  on  Beacon  Hill  was 

one  of  Bulfinch's  buildings.     The  beginning  of 

111 


Days    and   Ways   in    Old   Boston 

its  erection  the  "old  sheriff"  viewed  from  the 
windows  of  the  Usher  house. 


A  French  Venture 
A  daughter  of  Sheriff  Greenleaf  married  Chief 
Justice  Martin  Howard  of  North  Carolina  and 
she  with  the  other  executors  of  her  father,  sold 
the  house  and  gardens  in  1796.  It  came  into 
possession  of  Mrs.  Hepsibah  (Clark)  Swan,  wife 
of  James  Swan,  who  was  born  in  Scotland 
in  1754.  He  came  to  Boston  as  a  youth  and  was 
employed  with  Henry  Knox  in  the  book  shop  of 
Nicholas  Bowes  in  Cornhill.  He  first  came  into 
notice  in  1772  by  writing  a  pamphlet  against  the 
slave  trade.  When  hostilities  commenced  after 
the  "Tea  Party,"  of  which  he  was  a  member,  he 
was  an  assistant  in  the  treasury  office  of  the 
province  and  secretary  to  the  Board  of  War. 
He  was  the  companion  of  Joseph  Warren,  as  a 
volunteer,  at  Bunker  Hill,  but  fortunately  es- 
caped from  the  field  with  the  loss  of  his  coat  and  a 
broken  gun.  In  May,  1776,  he 
was  commissioned  a  captain  in 
Crafts'  Artillery  and  in  Novem- 
ber made  a  major  and  served  in 
the  Continental  service.  In  1788 
he  was  deputy  adjutant  general 
of  militia.  From  1779  to  1781 
he  was  part  owner  in  the  pri- 
vateer Boston  and  ships  Leighton 
and  Prosper  and  brigantine 
Nancy.  These  ventures  en- 
112 

Charles  Bulfinch 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

abled  him  to  purchase  the  estate  of  the  loyalist 
Nathaniel  Hatch,  son  of  Col.  Estes  Hatch,  in 
Dorchester.  In  1784  Swan  bought  Burnt  Coast 
Island,  Lincoln  County,  Me.  This  he  paid  for 
with  depreciated  Continental  currency,  a  shrewd 
condition  inserted  in  the  resolve  of  the  General 
Court. 

The  financial  conditions  of  the  new  republic 
were  unfavorable  to  Swan's  ventures  and  he  left 
Boston  in  January  1788.  His  most  pressing  cred- 
itor was  Patrick  Jeffries,  against  whose  treatment 
he  expressed  himself  most  bitterly.  He  went  to 
Havre  and  Rouen  in  France,  where  he  investig- 
ated French  manufactures.  On  his  arrival  in 
France  he  advanced  the  interests  of  the  States 
and  in  1790  published  in  French  six  letters  ad- 
dressed to  Lafayette  on  the  causes  of  the  opposi- 
tion to  commerce  between  France  and  the  States. 
In  1790  Swan  attempted  to  negotiate  a  loan  of 
$2,000,000  for  the  States  from  some  citizens  in 
Genoa.  As  an  American  whose  country  was  a 
refuge  he  assisted  many  royalist  refugees  to  Amer- 
ica and  also  shipped  the  household  effects  of 
others.  As  many  of  these  people  were  unfortu- 
nate enough  to  lose  their  lives,  a  Boston  wit  of 
the  last  century  observed  "The  guillotine  took 
their  heads  and  Swan  took  their  trunks." 

After  the  horrors  of  the  Revolution,  Mrs.  Swan 
joined  her  husband  in  his  house  in  the  Rue  Croix 
de  Petit  Champs,  and  in  1793  he  was  able  to 
say  that  he  had  paid  his  debts  and  re-established 
his  ancient  fortune  and  would  return, — which  he 
114 


r.  i*^'*lf$l^?i?'0&*  -    -  f  V  hi': !» 


4 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

did  in  1794.  In  the  following  year  he  visited 
Philadelphia  with  a  project  to  go  to  Spain  in  an 
official  capacity. 

About  this  time  he  became  possessed  of  25,000 
acres  in  Hardin  County,  Kentucky,  and  in  1796 
he  purchased  the  Greenleaf  estate  and  placed 
it  in  his  wife's  name  and  also  some  lots  bought  at 
auction  from  the  town,  a  part  of  the  site  of  the 
future  Colonnade  Row.  At  this  time  his  finances 
again  became  involved  and  he  sailed  in  1797  to 
France,  once  more  to  recoup  his  fortunes.  He  was 
not  as  successful  as  during  the  days  of  the  French 
Revolution,  for  ten  years  later,  in  1808,  Swan  was 
arrested  for  a  debt  due,  unjustly  as  he  claimed,  to 
Jean  Claud  Picquet,  a  Paris  merchant.  He  was 
imprisoned  for  this  debt  in  St.  Pelagie  prison  and 
stayed  there  until  the  Revolution  in  1830  opened 
his  prison  door.  He  did  not  long  survive  his  liber- 
ation and  died  the  18th  of  March,  1831.  Swan's 
wife  had  died  at  their  Dorchester  house  in  1825. 
Her  death  invited  an  attempt  by  the  French  cred- 
itor to  secure  payment  of  Swan's  debt  to  him. 
The  original  creditor  died  before  Mrs.  Swan 
and  in  1825  his  son  Anthonie  Furcy  Picquet 
came  to  Boston  and  applied  for  letters  of  adminis- 
tration on  the  estate  of  his  father  who  had  died  in 
Paris.  His  property  disclosed  were  18  Bills  of 
Exchange,  drawn  by  Freytag  on  James  Swan, 
for  521,646  francs,  and  accepted  by  Swan  in  1811. 
This  in  1825  with  interest  amounted  to  $97,808. 
The  Probate  Court  not  granting  administration, 
Picquet  went  to  the  General  Court  and  got  a 
116 


An   Historic   Corner 


resolve  in  his  favor.  The  case  then  went  to  the 
Supreme  Court  and  suits  were  brought  in  the 
United  States  Circuit  Court.  Meanwhile  during 
the  slow  course  of  the  law,  Picquet  became  a 
resident  of  Boston  and  acted  as  the  French  com- 
mercial agent  and  later  as  vice-consul.  Swan 
died  while  the  suits  were  pending.  In  his  will  he 
left  a  provisional  legacy  to  the  city  of  Boston  to 
be  invested  in  real  estate  and  farms  in  the  vicinity 
of  Boston  until  a  fund  of  $100,000  was  formed. 
With  this  an  "Orphan  Academy"  was  to  be  built. 
But  unfortunately  for  Boston,  his  estate  was  in- 
solvent as  the  Picquet  claim  was  allowed  in  the 
courts  and  debts  proved  to  the  amounts  of  $127,- 
000  and  $5,473.34.  The  Swan  assets  permitted 
a  payment  of  but  8.0625  cents  on  a  dollar,  and 
on  the  25th  of  July,  1836,  Picquet  asked  for 
the  amount  due  to  transmit  to  his  brother  Cyril 
Simon,  Baron  Picquet  in  Paris.  Thus  ended  the 
career  of  the  most  litigious  of  the  possessors  of 
the  Usher  house. 

Washington  Gardens. 
Swan's  own  name  does  not  appear  in  the  Boston 
directory  of  1809  as  living  on  Common  Street 
(now  Tremont),  as  he  had  taken  up  his  enforced 
residence  in  St.  Pelagie  the  previous  year,  but 
the  house  and  grounds  were  occupied  by  the 
Swan  family  or  remained  vacant,  till  1813.  The 
next  year  it  was  the  home  of  John  P.  Whitwell. 
Mr.  Whitwell  previously  resided  on  Pond  Street 
now  Bedford  Street.     He  was  an  apothecary  and 

117 


ifi—  • 
.- l£~$s$z-r' 


V 


v!M--  L  ^  V,     it: 


i\  1 


^= 


(usdts- 

'  Lefrialalttre,' 
•strut  month, 
>  the  author- 
rent  or  guar 
«,,  bclimpii»K 
.titled  l»  »hr 
nake  applics- 

'  ,de  in  wrilinjf . 
("the  Common- 
ertiticate  from 
here  such  |>:ir- 
f>rc3:.ibcil  by 

"■  tineleenlh  day 

BROOK.S. 

ssachcsetts. 

If.»  19.  1819. 
enry  the  tomrr- 
\tX%  dv. s  notice, 
apcrs  aj  he  may 
F  application  of  the 
sf  vs.Idumb  pci-- 
,m»<*r»lih,  ar<  om- 
it lie  !»«|rc'.in..;i  of 
nt  ur  (guardian  re- 
;h  parent  orpiar- 
of  board  anil  in- 
>  ilumS  person,  at 
i"  the  State  ofCon- 
W  aid  expense,  or  part 
r  ./ed"  by  thin  Common- 
hereinafter  mentioned- 
re  be  annually  appropri- 
easury  of  ibis  Coinmon- 
four  tiiouunil  dollars,  tr- 
ies' of  boar.'  and  instruction 
dumb  persona  at  the  Asylum 
however  exceeding  (or  each 
urn  of  two  hundred  i!..llais\per 
it  a  term  (.„  ei'.l:  ttidividua^iioi 
if  ;  e»r,   r,r  for  such  leas  time  as 
and  Council  may  judge  espe- 
M  if  a  (r».  ater  number  than  twenty 
'ban  f«rtv  aliill  apply,  the  aforesaid 
\jur  thousand  dollar*  shell  be  distilli- 
ng tbrm  in  esyial  proportion* ;  and 
number  th»n    f.jr-y    aliall   apply, 
i  entitled  aliall  be  (icaiirnirted 
iny  ease,  In  Ji:pri»e 
'  thi»  resolve,   or 
»lio  ahall  have 

thai  tlie 

nil  be 

baid 


AMPHITHEATRE, 

wutncTQti  c-urogys. 
Mr.  sod  Mrs.  PARKER'S  ftni  Jlppearance. 

dj'T\\e  Public  are  respectfully  informed, 
tbat  Mr.  Pansys,  Ballet  Master,  and  Mrs. 
Paukkii,  Principal  Uancer.ofthe  Jfea-Tark 
Theatre,  whose  performances  there  have 
been  so  highly  extolled,  are  engaged  at  the 
■  infiliitlieatre  roa  a  fsw  mgdts  o.xit,  sod 
will  appear  on  Monday  Evening  next. 

%j*  The  Manager,  for  the  general  accom<nb- 
d-nionofthe  Pttaur,  has  embellished  a  part 
of  the  Clip  a  with  elegant  Settles,  and  con- 
nected with  that  pait  of  the  bouse*  five  of 
the  lower  Uoxch.  These  seats  are  meant 
lo  atcomrbodate  a  proportion  of  respectable 
Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  who  may  prefer 
them  to  the  first  Boxes.  Places  for  these 
may  be  taken  singly  or  for  Familes  at  75  ct». 

(jj*  Siats  are  likewise  partitioned  off  for 
J'nple  r,f  Colour,  at  50  cents  each. 

Ox  MONDAY  KVEMlNG,  Jutt  19, 

Will  be  presented,  for  the  firtt  time  in  Boston,  a  Kem 
Ballet called 

UONAIJi  OF  DUNDEE: 

O  ^/....HIGHLAND  LADS  AND  LASSES. 

Got  up  under  Hie  immediate  direction  nf  Mr.  Packer- 

K-i  furiLed  at  tiie  New-York  Theatre 

with  unbounded  applause. 

Donald,     Mr  Parker.  |  Pattee,    Mrs.  Parker- 

Other  character!  in  small  hills. 

]n  the  euurse  of  the  Ballet, 

A  Favorite  Scotch  Song,    -    by  Mrs.  Parker. 

...Ai.o.... 

A  variety  of  Scotch  Dahcss, 

Strathpeys  and  the  Heal  itighland  Fling, 

After  the  Ballet., 

SOsG«  AND  RECITATIONS, 

By  Mr.  fcemard.  Mr.  Jonei,  and  Xrv  >YoeAlley. 

rimcuon  in  «o«ll  bills. 

After  which. 

The  much  admired  Shawl  Dance. 

By  Mrs.  PARKER- 
After  the  Dance,  _ 

.1  Cmcert  of  Vocal  and  /iiitrumental  Mumc. 

Particular!  in  iwall  billi. 
f  he  whole  to  conclude  with  a  .Vew  Rail*,  never  per- 
formed here called 

THE   sTA  I  II E  : 

Or_..CUPIH'S  RETREAT. 
Oot  up  under  the  direclK.li  o(  Mr.  Parker,  and  as i  per- 
formed »t  Ihe  New-York  Theatre  upward*  uf 
twenty  tiinei  during  111 tr  last  season. 
The  Oriruul  Muaic,         -  •  By  Bishop. 

Florian,    Mr.  Parker   |  Emily,     Mrs.  Parker. 

Other  character,  in  small  bills, 
luiti.-snurieol  the  piece, 
A  variety  of  Elegant  and  fancy  Dances. 
(r-7»  Ths  Overture  to  cummencc  at  8  o'clock 
pirVTTely  ■     J"'y  '7 


Uf 

burn! 

Ac  if 

A  vane 
of  a  hi.otl 
biea,  bed., 
Picture*, 
forks,  aod  K 

Also,  st  1 1  . 
Qlaatea,  uiata 


On  FKIu.v 

si 

Korf^uh, 

A  peat  vanety  ul  I 

mer*^,  4-4  uaiit>-4CaaiL 

Lo.jk  aufcl  cobweb  viu.-ii. 

btic  Lbtmtie;,  KijUutu, 

Sarsueta,  Sheetings,  4  4  s 

shji  t  yeiiotv  .Naukaij.  >kt 

.1t  Private  bale—  lllui 
kins,  entitled  to  debtu 
Ctapes,  hlautc  auJ  colo 
iijjht  Sewing  Silk,  J'J  ya 
Handk'is,  bird  «ye  Ha 
Umbrella  Srfks,  chmaC 

Valuable  Sale 

Oo  Wt-UiNt-bUA 

VViU  b«  Sol 

203  cases  (beii 
aud  CHAPLS,  in 
Brown,  how  (. 
It  caaes  bljj. 

4    do. 

4  do. 
40  do. 
1-4  do. 
10    do 

3  d< 
22  d. 
1U    d. 

tf    do. 

1     do. 


ALEXMt  KAMSAY,  M.  D. 

FOIlMKKbV'toiiclici  of  Auittomy  and  Physi- 
nioey  in  Sure-eons  xjiisrc.  Kdinburg,  North- 
Hrilain,  will  deliver  hi«  Autumnal  cou.-se  of 
In, I ,  ucllom  w  tho  abn»o  branches,  in  Concord, 
i.ntllu   lie;. nunc   <■<   AuRU-t    --  Vo,«l,- 


tlo.     I 


14  dj 
2  do. 
2  xlo 


b. 
dc. 

CO»il( 

do.     7-4  d 
do.     8-i     . 


30ti0  pieces  sho.-l 
iUL'U  do.  biue  do 

4  cases  clulb  ' 
equal  lo 

2  caaea  whit. 

ihe  atare  t 
tlroni  tJantuu,  at 
CHie,  Uie  order 
li-oin  ibis  low 
to  In u  mark 
■■  coucei-u,  i 


Announcement  or  the  Washington  Gardens 
(From  The  Centinel,  July  17,  1819) 


An   Historic   Corner 

his  shop  was  then  located  at  48  Newbury,  now 
Washington,  Street.  There  one  could  get  Dr. 
Church's  celebrated  Cough  Drops,  likewise  his 
much  esteemed  Pectoral  Pills;  and  there,  also, 
could  be  obtained  a  century  ago,  June,  1811,  for 
the  first  time,  "Ballstown  and  Soda  Water." 

"  The  proprietors  with  much  trouble  and  expense 
have  erected  an  entire  new  apparatus  by  means  of 
which  they  flatter  themselves  they  have  succeeded  in 
preparing  a  beverage  equal  in  strength  and  pungency 
to  the  boasted  soda  water  of  London  or  New  York." 

After  two  years'  occupancy,  Mr.  Whitwell 
removed  his  residence  to  Summer  Street. 

The  next  tenant  was  John  H.  Schaffer,  an 
auctioneer,  who  decided  to  devote  the  house  and 
grounds  to  purposes  of  entertainment.  On  the 
22nd  of  June,  1815,  the  "Washington  Gardens" 
were  opened.  Mr.  Hewitt  was  made  the  director. 
Soon  after  the  name  of  "Vauxhall"  was  added. 
One  advertisement  announced:  "the  concerts 
have  been  monstrously  attended  and  fashionably 
resorted  to  and  all  the  arrangements  found  neat, 
elegant  and  orderly,  the  music  excellent." 

Later  in  the  summer  variegated  lamps  were 
hung  in  the  foliage  of  the  garden,  and  fireworks 
were  displayed.  These  last  were  given  by  David 
from  the  Tivoli  Gardens,  Paris,  "the  projector  of 
the  grand  display  on  the  Champ  de  mars." 
The  summers  of  1816  and  1817  saw  similar  attrac- 
tions at  the  "Gardens."  In  May,  1817,  gas 
lights  (which  had  been  introduced  in  Boston  in 
1815)  were  installed  there. 
119 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

On  the  9th  of  December,  1818,  William  Sullivan, 
agent  of  Swan,  executed  a  lease  for  ten  years  to 
Shaffer  at  an  annual  rental  of  $1500  for  the  house 
and  gardens.  Shaffer  was  also  given  the  privilege 
to  erect  any  buildings.  In  1818  for  the  first  time 
the  theatre  seats  in  the  gardens  were  covered  with 
an  awning.  In  the  summer  of  1819  Shaffer 
erected  a  new  brick  amphitheatre  at  a  cost  of 
$4,000.  The  work  was  done  under  the  super- 
vision of  Gridley  Bryant,  a  builder  and  engineer. 
Later,  in  1824,  Bryant  designed  the  United  States 
Bank,  with  its  granite  pillars  24  feet  long.  He 
was  also  noted  for  his  inventions.  These,  how- 
ever, invited  much  litigation  and  he  died  a  poor 
man. 

A  typical  advertisement  of  the  Washington 
Gardens  at  that  period  was  the  following: 

AMPHITHEATRE 

Washington  Gardens 

"The  public  are  respectfully  informed  that  the 
Amphitheatre  will  be  opened  on  Friday  evening,  July 
2nd,  with  an  appropriate  address  under  the  immediate 
direction  of  Mr.  Bernard.  The  entertainments  on 
the  first  night  will  consist  of  recitations,  songs  and 
dances.  The  house  will  be  finished  in  a  style  of 
neatness  superior  to  anything  of  the  kind  on  this 
continent.  The  whole  of  the  scenery,  painting 
and  decorations  designed  and  executed  by  Mr.  Wor- 
rell. The  stage  is  very  handsome  and  commodious. 
The  circle  is  floored  and  provided  with  settees  after 
the  Paris  fashion;  the  boxes  will  be  handsomely 
fitted  up  and  the  whole  building  properly  ventilated. 
Mr.  Bernard,  Mrs.  Wheatley,  and  Mr.  Batterton  of 

120 


An   Historic   Corner 

great  celebrity  from  the  London  theatres  will  recite 
and  sing.  Mr.  Jones  and  others  are  engaged  to  form 
the  dances,  and  in  the  course  of  the  summer  much 
novelty  of  talent,  and  many  new  pieces  will  be 
brought  forward  with  every  care,  attention  and 
decoration  to  render  them  worthy  of  public  patron- 
age."— (Centinel,  80  June,  1819.) 

The  old  Usher  house  was  used  during  the  winter 
season  of  1819-20  for  the  entertainment  of  parties, 
societies  and  the  clubs  of  that  period.  Wines, 
liquors  and  such  luxuries  as  the  markets  of  those 
days  afforded,  were  advertised.  A  few  gentlemen 
boarders  were  accommodated  and  the  stable  on 
the  premises  gave  the  same  care  as  the  livery 
stables  of  the  town.  The  amphitheatre  was  to 
be  let  for  any  respectable  exhibition.  In  the 
previous  summer  there  had  appeared  "Pepin  with 
a  company  of  equestrians  and  elegant  horses 
after  an  absence  from  the  metropolis  of  twelve 
years." 

Amateurs  were  in  evidence  in  those  days  as  now, 
and  the  young  men  of  the  Philo-Dramatic 
Society,  of  which  J.  F.  Buckingham  was  president 
and  John  Brook  treasurer,  performed  Coleman's 
"Heir  at  Law"  in  July,  1820.  At  this  perform- 
ance the  settees  in  the  front  circle  were  reserved 
for  the  Governor  and  his  staff.  The  Selectmen 
were  also  guests  on  the  same  occasion.  This 
summer  Mr.  Brunei  had  his  "philosophical 
Exhibition,  and  Enchanted  Lady  placed  in  a  box 
disappearing  to  a  nearby  pedestal." 

Dr.  Preston  with  his  exhilarating  Nitrous  Oxide 
121 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

Gas  appeared  in  October  as  the  following  hand- 
bill advertised. 

"Bostonians  are  charmed  with  various  feats 
At  John  H.  Shaffer's  splendid  Garden  treats. 
Where  West  is  manager  and  justly  draws 
A  host  of  auditors  and  great  applause, 
By  showing  Yeoman  riding  upside  down, 
Where  Godean  proved  the  wonder  of  the  town, 
Where  X  X  X  X  is  retailed  by  the  single  glass, 
And  Doctor  Preston  gave  his  Oxide  Gas." 

In  the  summer  of  1820,  on  the  estate  north  of 
the  "Gardens,"  was  erected  St.  Paul's  Church. 
Shaffer  erected  in  the  northwest  corner  of  his 
Gardens  a  workshop  40  x  14.  This  he  leased  to 
Solomon  Willard,  the  architect  of  the  church  and 
of  Bunker  Hill  Monument.  The  next  year  a 
similar  structure  was  built  30  x  17  and  leased  to 
Henry  Ayling,  a  turner  or  wood-worker.  In 
August,  1821,  Guille  made  balloon  ascensions  from 
the  "  Gardens, "  landing  with  a  parachute.  It  was 
also  in  this  month,  on  the  eighth,  that  the  West 
Point  Cadets  formed  a  part  of  the  audience. 
They  were  encamped  on  the  Common  between 
the  Tremont  Street  Mall  and  the  "Old  Elm." 
On  the  11th  "on  the  Ancient  military  square" 
on  the  Common  in  front  of  the  State  House  they 
were  presented  a  stand  of  colors  by  the  inhabitants. 

In  June,  1822,  appeared  a  new  announcement 
of  the  Gardens  as  the  "City  Theatre."  Mrs. 
Barrett  and  Mrs.  Reed  from  the  New  York 
Theatre,  Miss  Turner  from  New  Orleans,  and 
Miss  Johnson  from  New  York,  appeared  during 
122 


An   Historic   Corner 

the  summer,  till  September,  when  the  Boston 
Theatre  on  Federal  Street  reopened.  The  prices 
were,  for  the  saloon  seventy-five  cents,  boxes 
fifty  cents,  and  pit  twenty -five  cents. 

In  1825,  in  honor  of  Lafayette's  visit,  his  figure 
was  displayed  in  a  transparency  placed  at  the 
south  part  of  the  Gardens.  Five  large  stars 
also  faced  to  the  north.  Perhaps  among  those 
present  some  recalled  that  the  owner  of  the  Gar- 
dens was  still  confined  in  his  French  prison. 
A  performance  this  season  concluded  with 
"Optical  Allusions  or  Robertson's  Phantasma- 
goria." In  those  days  "Venelli  and  Lemon,  Ice 
Creams  and  Fruits"  could  be  obtained  during 
the  performances,  especially  after  the  fireworks 
or  while  witnessing  the  "Grand  Indian  War 
Dance"  as  performed  by  a  company  of  Oneida 
Indians  in  October,  1828. 

During  the  last  few  years  of  Schaffer's  lease  the 
amphitheatre  was  mainly  devoted  to  equestrian 
performances.  In  the  summer,  fireworks  were  the 
great  attraction.  In  1828  there  befell  to  Schaffer 
the  fate  of  previous  owners  and  tenants  and  he 
in  turn  took  part  in  the  drama  of  the  law.  In 
January  he  had  contracted  to  pay  a  theatre  license 
of  $1,000  and  gave  bonds  for  $5,000.  He  found 
this  a  hardship  and  paid  $25  weekly  when  the 
theatre  was  open.  During  16  weeks  he  paid  in 
$400.  The  city  sued  him  for  the  balance  and  won 
a  verdict  in  the  Superior  Court.  Schaffer  appealed 
to  the  Supreme  Court,  where  the  verdict  was 
affirmed  and  Schaffer  retired  from  the  Gardens 
123 


isiT'-'viJ  4r*Sr-^  •    l:-^>    iff; 


The  Masonic  Temple,  Tremont  Street  and  Temple  Place,  about  1875 


An   Historic   Corner 


as  his  lease  was  soon  to  expire.     He  again  became 
an  auctioneer  and  died  in  a  few  years. 

Freemasonry  and  the  Law 
Through  a  gate  about  seventy -five  feet  from  the 
site  of  St.  Paul's  Church  on  Common  Street  (now 
Tremont),  in  1800,  one  passed  into  a  lane  running 
just  back  of  the  Usher  house.  This  was  known 
as  "Turnagain  Alley"  as  there  was  then  no 
outlet  into  Newbury,  now  Washington,  Street. 
An  entrance  to  the  Washington  Gardens  in  1826 
from  Newbury  Street  was  known  as  Washington 
Court.  In  1830,  just  before  Swan's  death,  the 
estate  was  cut  up  into  ten  lots.  Tradition  states 
that  the  Usher  mansion  was  removed  to  South 
Boston  and  in  whole  or  part  became  the  "Fire 
Department  Hotel"  kept  by  Reed  Taft  and 
known  later  as  the  "City  Point  Hotel."  The  es- 
tate contained  an  acre  and  forty  perches  or  square 
rods,  nearly  fifty-five  thousand  square  feet.  A 
century  ago  the  value  of  the  entire  tract  was 
$15,000.  At  the  present  time  the  valuation  of 
this  site  is  from  $150  to  $200 
per  square  foot,  or  approximately  ^ya||| 

$9,000,000. 

October  14th,  1830,  the  north 
corner  of  the  Gardens  was  the  scene 
of  an  event  important  to  the  Ma- 
sonic fraternity.  The  corner  stone 
of  the  Masonic  Temple  was  laid 
on  that  day  by  Joseph  Jenkins, 
Grand  Master  of  the  Grand  Lodge 

125 


Amos  Bronson  Alcott 


lesss? 


«r     \ 


An  Historic   Corner 


of  Massachusetts.  Mr.  Jenkins  was  a  carpenter 
and  builder  by  trade,  and  in  1820  had  built  in 
New  Orleans  the  Custom  House,  a  great  part  of 
the  woodwork  of  which  he  had  prepared  in  his 
workshop  in  Boston  and  shipped  by  water. 

The  erection  of  the  Masonic  Temple  led  to  a 
change  of  name  for  Turnagain  Alley;  it  became 
Temple  Court  and  later  Temple  Place.  For  a 
week,  in  1865,  it  was  known  as  Autumn  Street, 
and  in  the  summer  of  1869,  for  two  months,  it 
was  called  Avon  Street. 

The  exterior  of  the  "Temple"  needs  no  descrip- 
tion; it  has  been  pictured  in  many  views  during 
the  past  seventy -five  years.  In  the  basement  or 
first  story  was  a  chapel  and  two  school  rooms;  in 
the  second  story  a  lecture  room  seating  1,000 
persons.  In  the  third  story  were  two  halls  seat- 
ing 400  and  200.  In  the  top  story  was  Mason's 
Hall,  a  drawing  room  and  rooms  accommodating 
different  lodges.  The  cost  of  this  building  of 
"rubble  granite"  was  about  $50,000,  including 
the  cost  of  the  land. 

This  building  is  of  especial 
interest  because  it  was  iden- 
tified with  Emerson  and  Alcott. 
In  1834  Amos  Bronson  Alcott 
established  a  school  room  in  7 
Masonic  Temple.  His  first  as- 
sistant, Elizabeth  Peabody, 
has  in  her  "Record  of  a 
School "  given  the  story  of  the 
new  departure  in  Boston's 
127 


Mahgabet  Fuller 
(Marchioness  Ossoli) 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

school  system  by  Alcott's  educational  venture. 
Later,  in  1836,  Margaret  Fuller  (afterwards  Mar- 
chioness Ossoli)  assisted  in  French  and  Latin  as  a 
teacher. 

In  1838  the  scholars  left  abruptly.     This  re- 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 


suited  from  an  incident  which  indicates  the  anti- 
slavery  agitation  then  existing  inBoston.  Alcott 
admitted  to  his  school  that  year  a  colored  girl; 
this  caused  the  withdrawal  of  all  his  pupils, 
except  his  own  daughters,  and  the  school  closed 
in  1839. 

128 


Richard  H.  Stearns 


An   Historic   Corner 


It  was  in  the  Masonic  Temple,  in  1837,  that 
Emerson  gave  his  course  of  lectures  on  history, 
art,  science,  literature,  politics,  and  religion.  To 
this  famous  course,  the  Lowell  Institute  Lectures 
(founded  in  1839),  succeeded.  Later  the  Swiss 
Bell  Ringers  gave  their  concerts  in  the  Temple.  ! 


Judge  John  Lowell 

On  October  7th,  1858,  the  Masonic  Temple  was 
sold  to  the  Federal  Government  for  a  court  house. 
The  court  moved  from  Bowdoin  Square,  where 
its  sessions  had  been  held  for  two  years  in  the 
old  Parkman  mansion. 

Nathan  Clifford  presided  over  the  Circuit  Court. 

9  129 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

He  was  an  associate  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States.  The  Federal  District 
Court  was  presided  over  by  Peleg  Sprague,  who 
was  succeeded  by  John  Lowell  who  was  appointed 
by  President  Lincoln  on  the  11th  of  March,  1865. 

The  old  Masonic  Temple  was  destined  to  ex- 
perience one  more  radical  change.  After  its 
original  use  for  nearly  thirty  years  and  the  follow- 
ing period  of  almost  thirty  years  as  the  seat  of 
the  United  States  Court,  the  Federal  Government 
in  1885  sold  the  building  at  auction.  It  was 
bought  by  the  estate  of  the  late  William  F.  Weld, 
the  trustees  having  already  effected  plans  for 
remodeling  the  building  and  having  executed  a 
contract  with  R.  H.  Stearns  &  Company  to  lease 
the  property  if  secured.  The  remodeled  building 
was  occupied  by  the  new  tenant  in  the  summer  of 
1886  and  continued  as  their  place  of  business  until 
1908,  when  it  was  completely  torn  down  and  the 
present  modern  building  erected  and  occupied  in 
the  fall  of  the  following  year. 

The  business  of  R.  H.  Stearns  and  Company 
was  founded  in  1847  by  Richard  H.  Stearns, 
who  was  born  in  Ashburnham,  Mass.,  December 
25,  1824.  Soon  after  his  birth,  his  parents 
removed  to  New  Ipswich,  N.  H.  Left  an  orphan 
at  the  age  of  seven,  he  was  taken  to  Lincoln, 
Mass.,  and  brought  up  by  his  uncle.  His  educa- 
tion was  secured  in  district  schools,  and  from 
attending  for  one  year  Phillips  Academy,  An- 
dover,  after  which  for  a  time  he  taught  school. 

He  once  remarked  that  he  began  to  earn  his 
130 


Tremont  Street  and  Temple  Place,  1914 
(Present  store  of  R.  H.  Stearns  and  Company) 


An   Historic   Corner 


own  living  at  the  age  of  seven;  meaning,  doubt- 
less, that  even  in  childhood  he  was  compelled 
to  make  full  return  in  labor  upon  the  farm  for 
board  and  clothing.  His  first  business  experience 
was  selling  from  house  to  house  on  Beacon  Hill, 
a  load  of  potatoes  which  he  had  brought  from 
Lincoln  to  Boston  in  an  ox  team. 

In  1846  he  moved  to  Boston  and  found  em- 
ployment in  the  store  of  C.  C.  Burr.  A  little 
more  than  a  year  later  he  began  business  for 
himself,  opening  a  small  store  under  the  old 
Adams  House  on  Washington  Street.  This  was 
the  obscure  beginning  of  the  present  successful 
business,  in  which  the  founder  took  a  vital  in- 
terest until  his  death  in  his  85th  year.  At  that 
time  Hon.  John  D.  Long,  formerly  governor  of 
Massachusetts,  who  had  known  and  esteemed  Mr. 
Stearns  for  many  years,  thus  summed  up  the 
qualities  and  achievements  of  his  friend: 

His  record  as  a  citizen,  public  and  private,  commands 
universal  respect.  His  private  life  was  such,  abounding  in 
charity  and  good  influence  so  exemplary  of  the  virtues  of 
true  citizenship,  that  it  was  in  itself  a  public  life.  I  knew 
him  in  the  legislature  of  1875,  in  social  and  civic  relations, 
aud  in  his  business  as  a  leading  merchant  of  Boston.  There 
was  no  walk  in  which  his  steps  were  not  taken  in  honor, 
truth  and  righteousness. 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  that,  although  this 
business  has  occupied  five  different  buildings  dur- 
ing its  existence  of  67  years,  all  were  located  within 
two  and  one  half  blocks  of  the  present  store. 
This  stability  of  location  in  the  retail  trade  seems 
131 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

to  be  more  marked  in  Boston  than  in  any  other 
city  in  the  United  States.  Some  years  since, 
when  the  building  of  the  subway  under  Tremont 
Street,  and  the  consequent  removal  of  street  cars 
from  the  surface  was  under  consideration,  Mr. 
Stearns  sought  the  opinion  of  a  well-known 
builder  as  to  the  probable  effect  on  retail  trade  in 
the  vicinity,  who  made  this  reply:  "We  cannot 
move  the  center  of  Boston.  It  was  made  by  the 
Lord,  and  fixed  for  all  time." 


In  these  pages  there  have  now  been  traced  some 
of  the  changes  since  the  founding  of  Boston  which 
have  occurred  on  and  about  the  small  tract  of 
land  which  today  forms  the  corner  of  Tremont 
Street  and  Temple  Place.  From  that  far-away 
period  when  it  was  bounded  by  a  cow  path  and 
when  the  house  of  Usher  faced  on  a  winding 
country  road  from  which  led  "Turnagain  Alley," 
we  have  come  at  length  to  the  active  business 
district  of  a  great  city,  thronged  daily  by  thou- 
sands of  its  own  citizens  and  those  of  its  populous 
suburbs.  If  the  shadowy  forms  of  Hezekiah 
Usher  and  Waitstill  Winthrop  could  rise  from  the 
goodly  company  of  Puritans  beneath  the  sod  and 
visit  the  Boston  of  today,  the  headstones  in  King's 
Chapel  Burying  Ground  would  alone  offer  a 
suggestion  of  their  town  and  time. 


132 


OLD  BOSTON  BANKS 

And  Their  Relation  to  Local  and 
National  Development* 

Capital  tends  to  accumulate  in  old  and  pros- 
perous communities.  Early  in  the  history  of  the 
North  American  Colonies,  New  York,  Philadel- 
phia and  Boston,  because  of  advantageous  loca- 
tion and  strong  and  resourceful  citizenship,  be- 
came the  leading  communities  in  population  and 
wealth.  Hence  these  three  historic  seaboard 
cities  which  were  indeed  the  only  cities  worthy 
to  be  so  called  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  be- 
came at  once  the  nation's  financial  centers.  This 
supremacy  they  have  steadily  maintained  during 
more  than  a  century  of  the  nation's  unparalleled 
growth.  Laboring  each  in  its  own  way,  Boston, 
New  York  and  Philadelphia  together  have  fin- 
anced the  development  of  American  resources. 

Banks  and  Banking  in  Old  Boston 

Each  decade  in  the  swift  moving  industrial  life 
of  the  republic  has  brought  marked  changes,  and 
some  of  those  which  have  affected  or  developed 
the  policies  of  the  financial  institutions  of  Boston 
are  of  especial  interest,  as  they  clearly  reflect  the 
progress  of  state  and  nation. 

Boston  may  be  said  always  to  have  been  a 
prosperous  community.     In  early  Colonial  days 

*  From  information  supplied  by  Francis  R.  Hart,  Vice  Chairman  of 
the  Board  of  Directors  of  the  Old  Colony  Trust  Company. 

133 


Days    and    Ways    in    Old    Boston 

there  were,  it  is  true,  periods  of  discouragement 
but  by  the  close  of  the  Revolution  foreign  trade 
had  brought  success  to  many  Boston  merchants. 
The  establishment  of  banks  followed  the  accum- 
ulation of  capital.  There  were  two  hi  1794. 
The  first  local  institution  was  the  Massachusetts 
Bank  which  began  business  July  5,  1784,  with 
a  capital  of  $300,000,  and  in  1792  the  Union 
Bank  was  established.  In  1819  there  were  seven 
banks  in  Boston  with  a  capital  of  $7,300,000;  in 
1825  nineteen,  with  a  capital  of  $10,300,000. 

The  cautious  and  conservative  policies  which 
characterized  the  management  of  the  early  banks, 
seem  to  have  been  impressed  upon  later  gener- 
ations of  bankers  and  the  record  of  Boston  banking 
makes  it  plain  that  those  institutions  which  have 
earned  the  confidence  of  the  community  have  sel- 
dom betrayed  it.  In  consequence,  each  genera- 
tion of  bankers  has  stood  for  that  which  was 
best  in  its  time,  such  as  the  prompt  redemption 
of  unreliable  currency  with  a  minimum  of  expense 
to  the  holders;  the  resumption  of  specie  payments, 
and  opposition  to  all  forms  of  inflation. 

In  1847  there  were  twenty-six  banks  in  Boston 
(thirteen  of  which  had  been  chartered  at  least 
twenty-five  years)  with  a  total  capitalization  of 
approximately  $21,000,000,  and  all  of  which  were 
paying  dividends  ranging  from  six  to  ten  per 
cent.  Three  years  later  the  number  of  banks 
had  increased  to  thirty,  having  total  resources  of 
$42,718,431. 

For  possibly  a  little  more  than  a  century  the 
134 


State  Street  and  the  Merchants  National  Bank,  1914 


Old    Boston    Banks 


accumulated  capital  of  the  citizens  of  Boston  has 
amounted  to  an  impressive  total.  Within  that 
period  it  has  found  employment  in  three  dis- 
tinct ways — in  local  development,  in  national  de- 
velopment and  in  industrial  development.  In  a 
broad  sense  there  are  also  three  distinct  periods  to 
these  investment  policies. 

Local  Uses  of  Capital 

Prior  to  1850,  no  demands  were  made  to  finance 
distant  enterprises.  Boston,  like  other  cities  at 
that  period,  was  more  or  less  isolated.  It  was 
interested  in  itself  and  in  its  near  neighbors,  but 
when  judged  by  our  present  standards,  the  city 
had  very  limited  intercourse  with  other  parts  of 
the  country.  The  early  citizens  of  the  city  were 
men  of  clear  vision  who  had  faith  in  their  com- 
munity. In  consequence,  Boston  capital  found 
an  outlet  in  local  enterprises.  They  invested 
their  savings  in  Boston  docks,  buildings  and 
bridges.  They  built  highways,  reclaimed  marshes 
and  cut  down  Beacon  Hill. 

The  close  of  the  decade  from  1840  to  1850, 
which  marked  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  Bos- 
ton's early  foreign  trade,  marked  also  the  close  of 
the  period  of  investment  in  distinctly  local  enter- 
prises. New  uses  for  money  had  begun  to  appear, 
especially  the  railroad,  which  was  to  become  a 
factor  of  supreme  importance  in  the  affairs  of  the 
city,  state  and  nation,  and  likewise  a  mighty  con- 
sumer of  capital.  Moreover,  though  naturally 
built  first  in  the  old  settled  communities,  railroads 
185 


Days    and    Ways    in    Old    Boston 

had  even  greater  reason  for  existence  as  arteries  to 
the  frontier.  Thus  it  came  about  that  with  the 
resumption  of  national  development  after  the 
Civil  War,  the  call  came  to  Boston  for  financial 
assistance  in  distant  railway  construction.  This 
marked  the  beginning  of  the  second  general  policy 
in  connection  with  the  employment  of  capital. 

Railway  Building 

Unlike  the  whalers  and  the  clipper  ships  of  an 
earlier  day,  of  which  traditions  alone  remain, 
the  great  railway  enterprises  which  Boston 
bankers  and  merchants  brought  into  being  during 
the  period  from  1850  to  1890  are  today  a  colossal 
monument  to  the  courage  of  their  promoters. 
These  men  supplied  the  funds  which  built  rail- 
roads to  the  prairie  states  across  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains through  the  Northwest,  even  to  the 
Pacific  and  into  Mexico.  It  was  Boston  capital 
that  made  possible  the  Union  Pacific,  the  Atchi- 
son, Topeka  &  Santa  Fe,  Chicago,  Burlington  & 
Quincy,  the  Oregon  railroads,  Flint  &  Pere  Mar- 
quette, Mexican  Central,  and  many  others. 
With  sagacity  and  vision  greater  and  clearer 
than  even  their  fathers  possessed,  the  men  of 
Boston  laid  rails  through  the  wilderness  and 
opened  the  great  West. 

Clearly  this  was  a  distinct  period.  Like  the 
education  of  a  son  who  later  becomes  strong,  the 
West  justified  the  investment  even  though  profits 
were  not  always  at  once  assured.  Boston  had 
opened  the  gates  to  an  empire.     Marvelous  has 

1S6 


Old   Boston   Banks 


been  the  growth  of  the  enterprises  so  courage- 
ously financed.  Yet  the  appeal  of  the  West  to 
construct  railroads  was  merely  the  call  of  a  new 
country  for  aid.  This  was  obviously  a  temporary 
requirement.  Struggling  roads  which  at  first 
often  terminated  at  frontier  settlements  have  now 
become  colossal  transcontinental  systems,  no 
longer  requiring  the  aid  or  even  the  counsel  of 
the  financial  parents. 

Meantime  the  third  great  use  for  the  accum- 
ulated resources  of  the  banks  of  Boston  was  fast 
developing.  The  new  requirement  afforded  a 
permanent  and  normal  outlet  for  a  vast  aggregate 
of  capital. 

Industrial  Expansion 

A  grave  situation  had  been  developing  in 
New  England.  By  its  activity  in  constructing 
railways  to  the  prairies  and  the  Pacific  coast, 
Boston  had  materially  hastened  the  collapse,  for 
a  time  at  least,  of  New  England  agriculture  by  the 
competition  of  the  more  fertile  western  prairies. 
Undismayed,  however,  New  England  turned  to 
manufacturing,  and  with  justice-  demanded  the 
assistance  of  Boston  capital. 

From  1850  to  1914  agriculture  in  the  six  New 
England  states  has  in  some  respects  made  no 
progress  whatever.  Farms  are  substantially  the 
same  in  number  in  1914  as  they  were  half  a 
century  ago.  This  is  equally  true  of  the  number 
of  persons  employed  on  them.  Cultivated  acres 
have  decreased  and  while  the  total  products  of 
187 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

farms  have  about  doubled  in  value,  this  is  princi- 
pally due  to  higher  prices.  In  manufacturing, 
however,  the  change  has  been  so  extraordinary 
that  it  becomes  difficult  to  comprehend.  In  1850 
there  were  183,000  men  and  115,000  women  em- 
ployed in  all  industries  in  the  six  New  England 
states,  receiving  about  seventy-two  million  dol- 
lars in  wages.  Capital  invested  in  manufactures 
amounted  to  $160,000,000  and  annual  products 
were  valued  at  $275,000,000. 

From  1850  to  1910  population  in  New  England 
increased  two  and  a  half  times,  but  the  number 
of  persons  engaged  solely  in  manufactures  quad- 
rupled. They  received  nearly  six  hundred  mil- 
lions of  dollars  in  wages.  The  capital  invested 
amounted  to  two  and  a  half  billions  of  dollars, 
and  products  were  valued  annually  at  a  little 
over  two  and  a  half  billions  of  dollars. 

The  magnitude  of  industrial  growth  and  the 
changed  relationship  of  capital  to  value  of  product 
suggest  the  permanent  opportunity  and  duty 
that  came  to  the  bankers  of  Boston  after  the 
great  task  of  financing  the  railways  of  the  West 
was  approaching  completion.  It  was  the  call  of 
their  own  blood.  Innumerable  new  industrial 
enterprises  located  in  all  parts  of  New  England 
sought  for  capital.  Even  more  insistent  were 
the  well-established  enterprises  which  were  enter- 
ing upon  a  policy  of  expansion.  Some  industrial 
concerns  now  represent  greater  investment  than 
did  many  of  the  western  railroads  at  their  beginning. 
Creation  and  expansion,  however,  in  a  sense 
138 


Massachusetts  Bank  in  1800 


i  US'  !     Jli 


First  National  Bank  in  1914 
(Successor  of  the  Massachusetts  Bank) 


Old   Boston   Banks 


would  resemble  the  western  railroad  situation, 
and  afford  but  temporary  use  for  capital.  There 
was  another  more  urgent  and  recurrent  use. 
Upkeep  of  costly  plants,  high  wages  and  increased 
cost  of  materials  together  with  enormous  pur- 
chases of  raw  material  demand  constantly  more 
capital  to  conduct  prosperous  enterprises,  and 
here  the  comparison  between  the  figures  of  1850 
and  those  of  1910  tell  the  story:  In  1850  for 
each  $1000  of  capital  invested  in  manufactures 
in  New  England,  there  were  products  valued  at 
$1,720.  In  1910  each  dollar  invested  was  merely 
equivalent  to  the  same  amount  in  value  of  prod- 
ucts. This  change  of  proportion  means  that 
if  goods  could  have  been  produced  as  cheaply 
in  1910  as  in  1850,  the  same  value  of  products 
could  have  been  secured  with  one  billion  dollars 
less  capital. 

The  early  uses  of  Boston  capital  here  traced 
were  obviously  a  part  of  the  great  scheme  of 
development.  The  third  and  later  use  may  be 
considered  as  the  natural  and  permanent  outlet 
for  a  generous  share  of  the  resources  of  a  great 
and  prosperous  community. 

The   Banks   of   Boston  in    1914 

From  the  two  banks  of  1794  the  number  in 
Boston  had  increased  in  1914  to  sixty-two, 
divided  between  sixteen  national  banks,  twenty- 
four  trust  companies,  and  twenty-two  savings 
banks.  The  resources  of  the  national  banks 
has  aggregated  $372,000,000  and  of  the  trust  com- 

139 


Days   and   Ways   in    Old   Boston 


panies  $265,000,000,  while  deposits  in  the  savings 
banks  amounted  to  $280,000,000,  the  total 
resources  of  these  three  classes  of  Boston 
banks  reaching  the  huge  total  of  $917,000,000. 

Several  of  the  more  important  banks  of  Boston 
were  numbered  in  the  group  of  strong  institutions 
chartered  in  the  first  third  of  the  last  century, 
although  in  some  instances  consolidation  has 
altered  the  early  names. 

The  present  First  National  Bank  is  the  succes- 
sor of  the  pioneer  bank  of  Boston,  the  Massa- 
chusetts, chartered  in  1784.  This  historic  insti- 
tution was  merged  with  the  First  National  Bank 
in  1903.  In  1847  the  capital  was  $800,000,  sur- 
plus and  deposits  $411,000.  In  1914  the  capital 
had  increased  to  $5,000,000  and  the  surplus  and 
deposits  to  $90,000,000.  Something  of  the  city's 
growth  and  wealth  is  suggested  by  these  figures. 
The  National  Union  Bank 
is  the  oldest  of  all  Boston 
banks  in  the  sense  of  un- 
broken existence  under  the 
same  name.  Established  in 
1792,  it  began  business  in  a 
private  residence  on  State 
Street.  As  tenant  or  owner 
it  has  occupied  the  same  site 
ever  since,  a  continuous  resi- 
dence of  one  hundred  and 
twenty-two  years, — the  pres- 
ent building  being  erected  in 
1826. 


FIRST  CHARTER  SIGNED 
JUNE  B5,  1792. 

wgnJ/mao?c6 gov. 


140 


Old   Boston   Banks 


In  1793,  six  months  after  its  establishment, 
the  directors  declared  the  first  dividend  (4  per 
cent.)  and  semi-annual  dividends  have  been  de- 
clared from  that  date  to  the  present  time,  without 
interruption.  In  this  record  the  bank  is  unique 
among  American  financial  institutions.  In  1847 
its  capital  was  $800,000,  and  its  surplus  and  de- 
posits were  $1,402,194.  In  1914  the  capital  and 
surplus  were  $2,000,000  and  the  total  resources 
$12,723,265. 

The  Merchants  National  Bank  was  established 
as  a  state  bank  in  1831.  It  occupied  the  old 
United  States  Bank  building  on  State  Street  and 
the  present  Merchants  Bank  building  is  located 
on  the  same  site.  In  1847  the  total  resources 
were  $6,820,000,  which  had  grown  in  1914  to  the 
generous  figure  of  $46,000,000. 

Largest  of  all  Boston  national 
banks,  the  Shawmut  has  attained 
that  position  in  part  through 
successful  management  and  in  part 
by  consolidation.  It  was  estab- 
lished as  a  state  bank  in  1837.  The 
paid  up  capital  in  1847  was 
$500,000,  and  total  resources 
amounted  to  $1,212,729. 

In     1914     capital    and    surplus 
amounted    to    $15,000,000  and    total    resources 
exceeded  $116,000,000. 

Among  the  trust  companies,  a  form  of  bank- 
ing enterprise  which  has  now  become  very  im- 
portant,   the   Old    Colony  leads   in    magnitude 

141 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

of  resources  and  influence.  This  great  institution 
was  established  in  1890,  and  in  1914,  with  two 
branches  and  ten  distinct  departments,  it  reported 
resources  of  over  $100,000,000. 

This  review  of  the  development  of  bank- 
ing and  investment,  especially  since  1847,  would 
not  be  complete  without  reference  to  manifesta- 
tions of  the  early  investment  tendencies  of  the 
fathers  among  the  Boston  financiers  of  today. 
Inheritance  of  property  naturally  brings  with  it 
conservatism.  The  skill  and  daring  with  which 
the  founder  of  a  fortune  risked  his  all  and  won 
may  not  be  inherited  by  his  sons  and  grandsons, 
and  whether  it  is  or  not,  new  conditions  and 
lack  of  the  necessity  for  aggressive  action  all 
result  in  lessened  initiative  and  increased  caution. 

Naturally  in  Boston,  which  has  large  inherited 
wealth,  these  conditions  are  plainly  observed. 
Usually  they  tend  to  make  a  community  non- 
progressive, to  dishearten  the  active  and  ambi- 
tious, and  to  drive  such  men  to  more  congenial 
communities,  but  fortunately  for  Boston  the  old 
aggressive  spirit  of  the  pioneer  appears  in  these 
later  generations,  as  though  a  racial  instinct  were 
manifesting  itself.  The  whalers  and  the  foreign 
trade  have  vanished,  but  the  United  Fruit  Com- 
pany, a  venture  in  an  untried  field,  was  launched 
by  Boston  interests  and  with  its  fleets  and  plan- 
tations has  made  a  great    commercial  success. 

The  researches  of  a  famous  Harvard  scientist 
suggested  that  copper  mines  offered  a  vast  and 
profitable  field.     The  Calumet  and  Hecla  and 

142 


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Court  Street   Showing  Old  Colony  Trust  Company 


Old    Boston   Banks 


many  other  great  copper  mines  developed  by- 
Boston  capital  secured  for  the  city  preeminence 
as  the  financial  center  of  the  copper  industry. 
Boston  and  New  England  financed  and  developed 
the  telephone  and  later  in  partnership  with  New 
York  bore  a  large  part  of  the  burden  of  es- 
tablishing all  over  the  United  States  this  colossal 
and  supremely  necessary  enterprise. 

Finally,  groups  of  Boston  capitalists  have  in- 
vested great  sums  of  distant  industrial  or  public 
service  development.  Working  through  banking 
interests,  but  particularly  through  enterprises 
organized  and  conducted  for  the  purpose,  they 
have  aided  new  cities  and  states  to  obtain  inter- 
urban  electric  railway  service  and  light  and  power 
facilities.  Stone  and  Webster,  the  principal  Bos- 
ton firm  in  this  field,  have  become  nation-wide 
in  their  operations.  They  have  been  the  me- 
dium for  the  investment  of  more  than  one  hundred 
and  fifty  millions  of  dollars,  and  have  developed 
inter-urban  electric  railways  and  light  and  power 
companies,  along  Puget  Sound  (in  particular 
about  Bellingham  and  between  Everett,  Seattle 
and  Tacoma);  along  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  from 
Houston,  Texas,  to  Pensacola,  Florida;  elsewhere 
in  Texas;  in  Nevada,  Michigan,  Georgia;  in  many 
older  states  in  the  East  and  the  Middle  West, 
and  even  as  far  as  Cape  Breton  and  Porto  Rico. 
In  all,  this  firm  has  organized  and  started  on 
prosperous  careers  sixty-seven  corporations,  each 
of  which  is  proving  of  the  utmost  value  and  im- 
portance to  the  community  it^serves.  Together 
143 


Days   and   Ways   in   Old   Boston 

they  represent  a  capitalization  of  more  than 
$186,000,000. 

Thus  the  farsighted  policies  of  old  Boston  for 
the  application  of  capital  to  development  still 
persist.  Some  of  the  leaders  in  advancing  these 
present-day  projects  are  descendants  of  the  old- 
time  merchants  who  owned  the  clipper  ships  of  the 
fifties,  or  financed  the  western  railways,  and  so  a 
generous  share  of  the  capital  and  the  profits  of  the 
Boston  of  the  earlier  periods  is  still  at  work  today 
aiding  at  many  distant  points  the  national  de- 
velopment. 

True  to  the  traditional  policy  of  Boston,  these 
chains  of  widely  scattered  enterprises  have  not 
been  mere  promotions  or  schemes  of  corporate 
consolidation,  but  have  created  public  utilities  of 
incalculable  importance. 

A  century  and  a  third  have  now  elapsed  since 
the  beginning  of  the  republic.  Upon  every  page 
of  national  development  appears  the  evidence 
of  the  courage  and  aid  of  the  three  cities  with 
which  the  United  States  began  her  career  as  a 
nation.  Of  these  three,  Boston,  in  proportion 
to  population,  can  claim  fairly  to  have  surpassed 
the  others  in  the  great  achievement  of  nation 
building. 


144 


122389 


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